Children of immigrants in the Italian school system : what kind of assimilation?

Abstract

Our paper aims at identifying the kind of assimilation experienced by children of immigrants who arrived in Italy during the first decade of the 21st century, a time of great immigrant expansion. We aim at discerning to what extent children of immigrants within the Italian education system identify with or distance themselves from natives depending on the length of their stay in their new country. We use ITAGEN2 data, the first national survey on first and second generation immigrants, focusing on children attending their third year of middle school. Our results demonstrate evident signs of downward assimilation, especially for newcomers. Moreover, first generation immigrants, more so than second generations, tend to be similar to children of the Italian working class in terms of educational expectations, individual economic resources, and social relations.