Adolescents’ educational aspirations and ethnicity : evidence on children of African and Latin American migrants in Spain

Abstract

The study of aspirations among the children of migrants is critical to understanding the future integration and opportunities of ethnic-minority students. Previous studies on the factors leading to ethnic differences in educational aspirations have provided limited and inconclusive evidence, restricted to only a few specific national contexts. This article uses Spanish data from the General Evaluation of Educational Diagnostic (GEED) (2010) for students with an average age of 14 (N = 19,293) to examine different factors leading to variations in educational aspirations among the children of African and Latin American origin in Spain. Results from multivariate logistic models can be summarized as follows: (1) adolescents from African and Latin American backgrounds have higher college aspirations than their counterparts of Spanish origin, after accounting for their disadvantaged social origin and academic performance, while these differences – especially for the Latin American group – are concentrated among low-performing students; (2) the ethnic gap in aspirations is clearly more pronounced within disadvantaged socioeconomic groups than in more privileged groups, in line with the migrant optimism and social mobility thesis; (3) children of migrants who have recently arrived in Spain have higher college aspirations than the children of migrants born or fully educated in Spain, yet these differences are moderate; (4) speaking Spanish at home among the children of African migrants does not lead to differences in aspirations, compared to their counterparts with African-born parents who do not speak Spanish frequently. We discuss the opportunities and risks associated with such a minority aspiration-achievement gap, and its variations across demographic and socioeconomic groups, while framing the results within current policy and scientific debates revolving around demographic and migration issues.