Early tracking and immigrant optimism: a comparative study of educational aspirations among students in disadvantaged schools in Sweden and the Netherlands

Abstract

Educational tracking affects both the trajectories and the composition of peers that students meet in school. This study compares the effect of significant others on students’ educational aspirations within two transition regimes: the more comprehensive Swedish system and the more stratified Dutch. Separating between doxic and habituated aspirations, I hypothesize that (1) aspirations among students in disadvantaged schools will be lower in the Netherlands than in Sweden; (2) the higher educational aspirations of girls and children of immigrants will disappear when significant others are controlled for; and (3) the positive effect of significant others is more marked among Swedish students than among Dutch due to greater student heterogeneity. The data comes from 3202 students in schools with low average grades in Sweden and the Netherlands. Results were in line with the hypothesis with one important exception. There was a marked difference in habituated aspirations but no difference in doxic aspirations between the Dutch and Swedish students. In conclusion, the findings suggest a) that early tracking systems creates a disconnect between students’ hopes and what they perceive as likely outcomes, and b) that the phenomenon termed “immigrant optimism” and “ethnic capital” reflects unequal access to social capital.

Access to Social Capital and Educational Returns for Children of Immigrants: Evidence from Three Swedish Studies

“…The magnitude of the associations was modest, meaning that the better access to social capital should be seen as an incomplete buffer rather than as a levelling factor. However, both qualitative (Thapar-Björkert & Sanghera 2010) and quantitative (Behtoui 2017;Nygård 2017) studies have previously shown that access to social capital is also associated with educational aspirations. This means that social capital is likely to be more beneficial for education than our results suggest if outcomes are considered more broadly.…”

Preparing to transition to secondary education: perceptions of Dutch pupils with migrant backgrounds

“…The index score for the Netherlands is one of the highest in Europe. Nygård (2017) compares the Dutch early and vertically tracked system (also described as multi-tiered secondary education) with the more comprehensive Figure 1. the dutch educational system (source: authors' own figure).…”

Pre-Migration Status, Social Capital, and the Educational Aspirations of Children of Immigrants in Disadvantaged Swedish Schools

“…The terms used to denote these resources typically allude to ethnicity, for example ethnic capital (Lee & Zhou, 2017), ethnicity as social capital (Zhou 2005), or ethnicized social capital (Nygård, 2017). However, immigrant communities are often ethnically mixed, and "ethnic businesses" typically cater to multiple ethnicities from the same country or region of origin.…”