Research project After optimism: migration, ambition and life trajectories
Why do some young people aim higher than expected – and what does it mean for their future? Migrant background youth often choose more ambitious secondary tracks than their peers with similar grades. This project explores the long-term consequences of these choices, the social forces that shape them, and how the journey towards realising them is experienced.
Despite achieving lower grades on average in lower-secondary school, children of immigrants tend to have high aspirations and choose academic tracks in upper-secondary school at higher rates than their majority peers. Research on this ‘immigrant optimism’ has mainly explored its causes and assessed its impact on degree completion rates. This project adopts a wider life-course perspective on this phenomenon and extends this literature in several ways.
- First, we go beyond degree completion by mapping out the broader educational and labour-market trajectories that these degree choices result in.
- Second, we advance the primarily quantitative work on the causes of this optimism by examining the socio-biographical forces and affective drives it depends upon.
- Third, we extend prior work on class and social mobility by studying the social psychological impact of the mobility patterns that this optimism results in.
Methodologically, we use a sequential mixed-methods design combining longitudinal register data, survey data, and life history interviews. Theoretically, the project I mainly rooted in Bourdieu’s theory of practice, but the combination of low socio-economic status and high aspirations raise challenges within this tradition that we will strive to address.
The study has major societal relevance as it will increase our understanding of the social factors underlying the polarized educational outcomes among children of immigrants and what they result in over time. The study can thus generate key insights into how to maximize the benefits of optimism while minimising its risks.
Project title: After optimism: a life course perspective on the aspirations, trajectories, and social mobility of children of immigrants
Project description
The project has three main research questions:
- How do optimistic upper-secondary track choices affect low-SES children of immigrants’ educational trajectories and labour market transition patterns?
- How do low-SES children of immigrants explain the optimistic school choices they make and what social factors primarily come to shape and sustain their aspirations?
- How do low-SES children of immigrants’ subjectively experience their educational and labour market achievements, and what social factors shape these experiences?
Methods
First, we use longitudinal register data from a full birth cohort to address RQ1. The statistical analyses mainly aim to study the educational and labour market trajectories that follow the choice of academic upper-secondary tracks despite lower GPAs from lower-secondary school.
Second, we use the register data to collect survey data, providing further insights into RQ1 and exploring RQ2. The survey primarily aims to provide supplementary data on aspirations, motivations, experiences and outcomes among students that make optimistic educational choices, regardless of their background.
Third, the survey is used to recruit interviewees and address all three research questions of the study. This qualitative data aims to understand respondents’ expectations in their early family environments, the meaning they attribute to the educational and professional choices they have made, the personal drives and motivations underpinning their pursuits, and how they have subjectively experienced their educational and professional trajectories and outcomes.
A pilot interview study will also be conducted at the start of the project with students from migration backgrounds who are the first in their family to study at university.
Project members
Project managers
Biörn Ivemark
Researcher
Members
Olav Nygård
Associate Professor
