Turning Migration Disadvantage into Educational Advantage. Autobiographies of Successful Students with an Immigrant Background

Abstract

The article focuses on unexpected pathways of successful students with an immigrant background, in order to investigate the implication of this phenomenon from a theoretical, methodological and empirical point of view. After a review of the main sociological studies on «immigrant optimism» towards educational success, I will reflect on biographical approach, particularly suitable to study this topic. A on-going research project based on the collection of educational autobiographies of successful immigrant-origin students, attending upper secondary schools in Northern Italy, is presented. Then, the story of Destiny, a 16 years-old girl with Moroccan origin, is used as a case study to explore transformative actions that lead second-generation students to educational success and to identify the social logic enrolled in a single case. Destiny, with the support of parents and teachers, shows the capacity to turn the disadvantage of migration into an educational advantage, through specific strategies developed to contrast adversities and inequalities, assuming education to handle social constraints. In Destiny autobiography, migration reveals its nature of biographical resource and its important role to lead disadvantaged students to excellent school outcomes: migration appears as a an experience of familiar sufferance and failure, but also a source of a biographical learning; a chance of reflexivity on failure and of awareness of disadvantage; an experience that transmit and foster non-cognitive skills, that are strong predictor of educational success. The methodological choice of «educational autobiography» is thus considered crucial to track new narratives and discourses on ethnic inequalities in education. KeywordsImmigrant-origin students, immigrant optimism, educational autobiography, migration as a biographical resource. ResumenEl artículo se enfoca en las improbables e inesperadas rutas escolares de los alumnos de origen inmigrante, caracterizadas por el rendimiento académico positivo y el éxito del proyecto educativo y biográfico, con el fin de investigar las implicaciones de este fenómeno desde un punto de vista teórico, metodológico y empírico. Después de una revisión de los principales estudios sociológicos sobre el «optimismo inmigrante» hacia el éxito educativo, se reflexiona sobre el enfoque biográfico, particularmente adecuado a ese tema. Además se presenta un proyecto de investigación basado sobre la colección de autobiografías educativas de estudiantes exitosos de origen inmigrante de escuelas secundaria superiores. Luego, la historia de Destiny, una niña de 16 años de origen marroquí, se utiliza como estudio de caso para explorar acciones transformadoras que llevan a los estudiantes de segunda generación al éxito educativo y a identificar la lógica social inscrita en un solo caso. Destiny, con el apoyo de sus padres y maestros, muestra la capacidad de convertir la desventaja de la migración en una ventaja educativa, a través de estrategias específicas desarrolladas para contrastar las advers...

Writing Educational Success. The Strategies of Immigrant-Origin Students in Italian Secondary Schools

“…The grid was structured in 34 points, with an introductory presentation and a final section on personal data (cf. Table 1; for the whole grid, see Santagati 2018).…”

Con Amore: Exploring How Italian School Leaders and Teachers Accommodate Immigrant Students

“…Over the last two decades, while there has been limited research, some scholars have contributed to research by highlighting the educational inequalities of immigrant students (Battistini & Meroni, 2016;Salza, 2022;Santagati, 2018). Additionally, some authors have found a significant achievement gap between immigrant and native students in Italian Schools (Barban & White, 2011, p.74;MIUR, 2017;Özdemir & Özdemir, 2020;Vlach, 2019).…”