‘White flight’ in Milan: School segregation as a result of home-to-school mobility

Abstract

The paper aims to show how and to what extent the system of compulsory education in Milan is affected by social and ethnic segregation. We argue that, despite being guided by the general criteria of universal access and equality of treatment, not only do Milan’s schools fail to counter socio-economic inequalities and differentiation along ethnic lines in an effective manner, but they actually tend to amplify and entrench them. We begin with a theoretical discussion of the main factors contributing to school segregation and a general overview of Italy’s compulsory education system. This is followed by a presentation of the empirical case of Milan, analysing social and ethnic segregation of children of primary school age (i.e. 6–10 years) by place of residence and school of enrolment. As a clear gap emerges between the ‘natural’ and the ‘actual’ school composition, our analytical focus then shifts to home-to-school mobility as an expression of parental choice. We show that 56% of all students in Milan do not enrol at local state schools and this is due to two main phenomena: families choosing private schools and families moving within the state school system. The analysis of these movements makes it possible to identify avoidance dynamics (i.e., in which disadvantaged or ethnic areas are avoided), as well as incoming mobility towards private schools and state schools located in affluent areas or with a lower intake of pupils of non-Italian ethnic backgrounds.

School segregation in contemporary cities: Socio-spatial dynamics, institutional context and urban outcomes

“…make for a more mixed urban environment. In Milan, the level of residential segregation is relatively low and it concerns the micro-scale within neighbourhoods, while the school choice mechanism leads to higher segregation in education (see Cordini et al, 2019, in this special issue); in Athens and Volos we do not have exact measures, but qualitatively the articles underline that the levels of socio-economic and ethnic residential segregation are not very high, and, in the case of Athens, they are also linked to forms of vertical segregation within the same buildings (see Maloutas et al, 2019, in this special issue; Vergou, 2019, in this special issue). In Barcelona, the combination of catchment areas, school choice mechanisms and segmentation of the school supply into public and private makes the system relatively segregated, even in the face of low levels of residential segregation.…”

Educational inequality and state-sponsored elite education: the case of the Dutch gymnasium

“…These geographic features also mean that spatial transformations associated with residential mobility may often lead to changes in the educational landscape. In Paris and Milan, for instance, concentrations of wealth have long been established that serve to spatially isolate the wealthy from the rest of the population (Cordini, Parma, and Ranci 2019;Pinçon-Charlot and Pinçon 2018). In London, by way of contrast, many urban elite schools moved to suburban locations as a response to the suburbanisation of the upper (middle) classes (Gamsu 2016).…”

Deprivation at local level: Practical problems and policy implications for the province of Milan

“…Conversely, the great advantage that we have in GWPCA is the chance to indicate and develop localized policies to cope with various dimensions of deprivation. In our application, for example, this results in a series of policy implications for policy-makers at locality level as the need for improving accessibility to education in the surroundings of Milan, as also stressed by Cordini, Parma, and Ranci (2019).…”