The study of integration processes has now reached a crucial stage in most Western European countries with the emergence of the second generation. The oldest children born to postwar immigrants on European soil have recently entered the job market, and we can now investigate their performance in both education and employment. This opens a unique opportunity to compare the situations of second generation migrants across countries. Ostensibly the children all have the same starting position, being born in the country of settlement. The intriguing question is how differences between immigrant groups, and also differences in national contexts, work to the benefit or detriment of the second generation. We discuss the first issue briefly, confining ourselves here to Turkish and Moroccan immigrants. In addressing the issue of national contexts, we focus primarily on policies and practices rather than on broad‐reaching national integration models. We examine in detail the integration process itself in the context of vital institutional arrangements such as the education system and the mechanisms for transition to the labor market. How do such arrangements differ between countries, and how do they affect the outcomes for the second generation?
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To cite this article: Maurice Crul (2015): Super-diversity vs. assimilation: how complex diversity in majority-minority cities challenges the assumptions of assimilation, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, ABSTRACTInternational migration changed large West European cities dramatically. In only two generations' time, their ethnic make-up is turned upside down. Cities like Amsterdam and Brussels now are majority-minority cities: the old majority group became a minority. This new reality asks for an up-to-date perspective on assimilation and integration. In this article, I will show why grand theories like segmented and new assimilation theory no longer suffice in tackling that new reality of large cities, and I will question critically whether using the perspective of super-diversity is more pertinent for our analyses. Children of immigrants nowadays no longer integrate into the majority group, but into a large amalgam of ethnic groups. Next to the diversification of ethnic groups, we see diversification within ethnic groups in the second and third generations. I will focus on intergenerational social mobility patterns given that they are key to existing grand theories of assimilation. I will argue that super-diversity theory can only partially show us the way. To further build an alternative theoretical perspective, we also need to borrow from the intersectional approach and the integration context theory. ARTICLE HISTORY
This introductory paper to the special issue of JEMS on the second generation in Europe reviews some of the key themes underpinning the growing interest in the second generation, and asks what 'integration' actually means in contemporary debates about immigration and settlement. The authors attempt to place these debates within their specific national contexts, in particular by applying US-developed theories of secondgeneration integration to Europe. In this way, we build on the embryonic transatlantic dialogue about which factors potentially account for different patterns of secondgeneration integration in different countries. Integration, in this sense, refers both to structural aspects such as educational and labour-market status as well as to a broader and at times fuzzier concept that includes ideas of culture, ethnic or religious identity and citizenship. The paper also sets the scene for the various articles in this special issue which together illustrate the thematic breadth of European-based research on the children of immigrants. We conclude by offering two theoretical avenues for future research on ethnic minority groups and their settlement patterns.
This article examines the socioeconomic and sociocultural status of the second‐generation Turkish young people in the Netherlands, comparing them to their Moroccan counterparts. The comparative perspective can better highlight the characteristic features of the Turkish second generation. The educational status of both the Turkish and the Moroccan young people is still weak, especially by comparison with their ethnic Dutch peers. The obstacles that second‐generation migrants encounter in their educational careers are many and diverse, and these derive both from inside their own groups and from institutional structures and other forces in Dutch society. Among the latter has been the delay in introducing professional second‐language training, which resulted in Dutch language deficiencies and poor primary school achievements. This, in combination with early school selection mechanisms at age 12, has consigned the vast majority of second‐generation children to short, dead‐end lower vocational or secondary school tracks. Unemployment is extremely high among the second‐generation migrants with short educational tracks, and discrimination in the labor market hits this group especially hard. Despite all this, the number of second‐generation young people who have succeeded in getting a better education is growing, and they are now well equipped to seek employment. An important factor in their success has been the mutual help and support they have received from family and community networks.
A growing proportion of second‐generation Moroccan and Turkish youngsters in Belgium are moving on to higher secondary education and beyond. This trend is greater among Moroccan youngsters than among their Turkish peers. Turkish girls in particular are still married off at a young age, which inevitably affects their educational opportunities. Despite higher participation rates for youngsters from immigrant backgrounds, the educational gap with Belgian pupils and students remains wide. This is largely attributable to differences in socioeconomic background. It appears that the concentration of second‐generation immigrant pupils in certain schools is also a major explanatory factor. Despite their increased participation in education, second‐generation immigrants are still not well represented in the labor market and they are, moreover, employed mostly in less favorable segments of that market. An interesting development among second‐generation immigrants is the polarization that is taking place in relation to the significance of Islam. A growing number of second‐generation youngsters are opting for a more secular way of life, while an increasingly large group is choosing Islamist ideologies or at least a more conscious form of Islam. For young people of the second generation, who often have little to hold on to socially, Islamism can provide a transparent, supportive, and all‐embracing frame of reference.
We introduce what we have coined the multiplier effect. We explain the steep upward mobility of children of low-educated immigrants by studying how they overcome obstacles on their regular pathway, via alternative routes or through loopholes in the education and labour market system. The idea of the multiplier effect is that they virtually propel themselves forward in their careers. Essential is that each successful step forward offers new possibilities on which they build, thereby accumulating cultural and social capital and multiplying their chances of success. Initial small differences with their less successful co-ethnic peers generate an increasingly wider gap over time. Cultural and social capital theories primarily explain the reproduction of inequalities in society. The multiplier effect explains the breaking of the perpetual cycle of this reproduction, enabling steep upward mobility even when this group does not initially possess the right cultural and social capital to be successful.
Based on the first international standardised survey on the second generation in Europe, I compare the school trajectories of youth from the same origin group (parents born in Turkey), with the same starting position (born in Europe) and the same socioeconomic status (parents with only modest educational credentials) in six European countries. The differences between countries are substantial. The opportunity to enter higher education is seven times greater in the highest-performing country than in the lowest. These differences can be explained by the institutional arrangements in education in interaction with the available family resources. The article highlights the importance of the oft-neglected national school context.
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