Educational expectations of migrant students in Italy: Second-class destiny or integration’s opportunity?

Abstract

School choices are a complex and important step that characterizes the path of any student. This moment of transition is particularly crucial for foreign students, for whom it represents also a measure of their integration. The aim of this work is to verify if the Italian intercultural model is ensuring equal opportunities for immigrant students and if foreign students are able to progress through the educational system on par with other Italian peers. Our purpose, more specifically, is to verify if foreign students have the same aspiration for the future than the Italian ones, investigating the role and the weight of some important background factors such as gender, socio-economic status and learning abilities. We used census data coming from INVALSI (Italian National Institute for the Evaluation of Educational System) of grade 10 in the academic year 2016/2017. The key variable of this study relies on the question about educational expectation («What is the highest degree you expect to obtain?»), analyzed according with student’s origin (native/ migrant), keeping into account also the age of arrival in Italy for students born abroad.