Turkish immigrants and their descendants have become the main target of antiimmigrant political mobilization in Austria since the 1990s. They have come to epitomize the image of the Oriental enemy and the Muslim other. Based on these discursive constructions, Muslims in general, and Turks in particular, have often been described as unwilling to integrate into Austrian society. The articles in this special issue show not only that these discourses and exclusionary attitudes may result in discriminatory practices towards Turkish immigrants and their descendants in Austria, but also that the alleged unwillingness to integrate may be explained by the lack of effort made by the Austrian government and Austrian institutions to integrate this group.
The most recent Austrian Integration Report indicates that a substantial proportion of Turkish immigrants do not feel at home in Austria. Whether these lower levels of social well-being also apply to the Turkish first, second or follow-up generations in Austria is uncertain. This article aims to fill this gap by asking how the Turkish second generation perceives their social inclusion into Austrian society. Results based on the TIES survey reveal that social well-being is largely determined by immigrants’ socioeconomic achievements as well as by experiences of discrimination in their educational and occupational trajectories and daily life. Intergenerational progress is also found to be positively related with social well-being but at a much lower level.
This study examines the factors that contribute to cross-national differences in educational attainment among second-generation Turks in Austria, the Netherlands and Sweden. Drawing on the international TIES survey we investigate empirically school trajectories and outcomes from descendants of Turkish immigrants in the three countries to identify the main driving forces behind social mobility. We pay particular attention to the interactions between the prevailing institutional arrangements in school and the role that family resources play in education to explain cross-national differences in outcomes. Our results show these crossnational differences can hardly be explained by differences in the parental generation of second-generation Turks. Instead, our empirical evidence highlights that the interaction between the institutional arrangements and family level factors determines the direction and the ultimate outcome of the educational process. Education systems which provide more favourable institutional arrangements render second-generation Turks less dependent on family factors and resources and ultimately lead to their higher educational attainment.
This research volume investigates educational inequalities among children of Turkish immigrants in multiple North-Western European countries. Turks are one of the largest immigrant groups in this region, and they are among the most disadvantaged in terms of education. This study seeks the causes of variations in educational mobility of second-generation Turks across three European countries and five cities in Sweden, France, and Austria.
The findings show that differences are most pronounced in the Austrian education system. They can be seen clearly in France, and they are least pronounced in the Sweden. Cross-national differences are explained via an investigation of individual and institutional factors and the interactions between the two. The study underscores the importance of both individual characteristics and institutional ones. But the institutional arrangements of education systems are found to matter more for the outcome of this mobility process. In educational systems that provide more favourable institutional arrangements, educational mobility of second-generation Turks becomes less dependent on individual-level factors and resources, thus leading to greater educational achievement.
_________________________________________
“This methodologically sophisticated dissection of the roots of educational disadvantage among the children of Turkish immigrants in Austria, France, and Sweden subtly probes the interplay of family background, school experience, and educational systems. It gives us the clearest picture yet of what counts, when, and why.”
– John Mollenkopf, Distinguished Professor, City University of New York Graduate Center
“ Of great interest not only to migration scholars and specialists in the education of children of migrant origin, but also to researchers in the sociology of education and others concerned with education in general.”
– Rosa Aparicio Gómez, Instituto Universitario de Investigación José Ortega y Gasset
“The range of quantitative methods utilized in order to adopt different analytical angles is impressive … A clear contribution to the field.”
– Can M. Aybek, Bremen University of Applied Sciences
_____________________________________________________
News Stories
By drawing on comparative analyses of successful second-generation Turks from disadvantaged family backgrounds in France and the Netherlands, this article examines pathways and mechanisms that lead to educational success against the backdrop of structural and familial disadvantages. We foreground the experiences and practices of successful second-generation Turks in both countries and demonstrate the importance of institutional arrangements and their interactions with individual resources to account for their success. We use data from the “The Integration of the European Second Generation” (TIES) survey to reconstruct school careers and to inventory opportunities and constraints presented to them in the most important selection processes. We illustrate our findings with life stories drawn from qualitative interviews with TIES respondents in both settings. Combining the results of both quantitative and qualitative data analysis allows us to unravel the mechanisms of the educational success of second-generation Turks from disadvantaged backgrounds.
This paper analyses neighbourhood embeddedness of immigrant and non-immigrant populations in six European cities. We define neighbourhood embeddedness as an individual level concept and distinguish two main dimensions: place and network embeddedness. The neighbourhood embeddedness concept provides us with the possibility to study attitudinal and behavioural aspects of individuals related to the place of living. Using data from the ‘Generating Interethnic Tolerance and Neighbourhood Integration in European Urban Spaces’ (GEITONIES) project, we explore communalities and differences in the degree of embeddedness and its underlyingmechanisms for immigrant and non-immigrant residents across a set of different neighbourhood types. Our findings suggest that neighbourhoods are still important focal points of social life. But immigrants are characterized by higher levels of neighbourhood embeddedness than native residents which are mostly related to the strong link between perceived feelings of attachment to the people in the neighbourhood and the place as such.
Im Beitrag von Barbara Herzog-Punzenberger und Philipp Schnell rücken die mehrsprachigen Kinder und Jugendlichen in den Fokus. Ihre Situation wird in einem ersten Schritt mit der Frage der Mehrsprachigkeit in der österreichischen Schule und Gesellschaft sowie im Unterricht verknüpft. Unter dem Aspekt der Chancengleichheit werden anhand der verfügbaren Daten die Bildungsteilnahme und -verläufe von mehrsprachigen Kindern und Jugendlichen in Österreich und im internationalen Vergleich einschließlich der sie beeinflussenden Faktoren untersucht. Hingewiesen wird dabei auf die wenig beachteten Diskrepanzen zwischen Schulformen im berufsbildenden Schulwesen.
The authors use 2009 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) data to determine how immigrant children in Italy and Spain compare with native students in reading and mathematics skills. Drawing on the vast empirical literature in countries with traditionally high rates of immigration, the authors test the extent to which the most well-established patterns and hypotheses of immigrant/native educational achievement gaps also apply to these comparatively “new” immigration countries. The authors find that both first- and second-generation immigrant students underperform natives in both countries. Although socioeconomic background and language skills contribute to the explanation of achievement gaps, significant differences remain within the countries even after controlling for those variables. While modeling socioeconomic background reduces the observed gaps to a very similar extent in both countries, language spoken at home is more strongly associated with achievement gaps in Italy. School-type differentiation, such as tracking in Italy and school ownership in Spain, do not reduce immigrant/native gaps, although in Italy tracking is strongly associated with immigrant students’ test scores.