Migrant Penalties in Educational Achievement: Second-Generation Immigrants in Western Europe

The integration of second-generation immigrants has proved to be a major challenge for Europe in recent years. Though these people are born in their host nations, they often experience worse social and economic outcomes than other citizens. This volume focuses on one particular, important challenge: the less successful educational outcomes of second-generation migrants. Looking at data from seventeen European nations, Camilla Borgna shows that migrant penalties in educational achievement exist in each one-but that, unexpectedly, the penalties tend to be greater in countries in which socio-economic inequalities in education are generally more modest, a finding that should prompt reconsideration of a number of policy approaches.

Camilla Borgna obtained a Ph.D. in Political Studies at the University of Milan in 2014 and is currently Senior Research Fellow in the unit ’Skill Formation and Labor Markets’ at the WZB - Berlin Social Science Center. Her research lies at the intersection of social stratification, sociology of education, and comparative social policy. Her work appeared in the European Sociological Review, European Societies, Social Science Research, and in the Journal of European Social Policy.