Towards a balanced multiculturalism? Immigrant integration policies and immigrant children's educational performance

Abstract

The present study examines whether a host country's institutional environment of immigrant integration influences immigrant youth's integration into its educational system. Ensuring immigrant youth are well integrated into the educational system bears paramount societal significance because the educational pathways of these youth will determine not only their own life trajectories but also the future of society as an integrated whole. Based on a dataset that links PISA 2015 with MIPEX 2010, a series of cross-national multilevel analyses has been conducted for 227,028 children in 34 OECD countries. Two important patterns stand out in the results. First, the academic performance of immigrant children tends to be more comparable to that of their non-immigrant peers in countries characterized by a more egalitarian distribution of civic rights. Second, the performance gap for immigrant children appears smallest in countries characterized by a medium level of sociopolitical promotion of group-based cultural rights. These patterns suggest that policy efforts toward balancing between diversity and unity combined with systemic levers for egalitarian civic rights may contribute to the macro-level institutional environment in which social disadvantages of immigrant students can be mitigated.