MiSoC researcher Dr Zsofia Boda has co-authored a new study looking at how migrant children integrate into school in new countries and the role of friendships.
The study finds pupils from various minority groups may
benefit from friendships with majority-group members,
particularly with those successful in the education system.
Mixed-ability, and mixed-ethnicity, classrooms are therefore
a key component to promoting upward intergenerational
mobility among the children of labour migrants.
The research team looked at survey data following Turkish migrant children settling into schools in Germany.
Dr Boda said: ‘We investigated how pupils of Turkish origin in Germany select
their friends, and how these friends in turn influence their
educational expectations (the qualifications pupils think they
would realistically get in the future).
We looked at data on the friendship networks of 91
classrooms in German secondary schools, together with the
educational expectations of pupils in these classrooms.
Educational expectations are early indicators of actual
educational qualifications. The possible educational
expectations were, in line with the German school system,
university as well as upper, intermediate, and lower
secondary degrees.
Pupils were about 15 years old at the time of the first
data collection. Data on both friendship and educational
expectations were collected twice, with one year in-between,
so it was possible to see how both changed over time.
This allowed us to investigate both how friendships
influence expectations and how expectations influence
friendships, over time. We analysed the data using both ordinal
logistic regressions and specialised models for social network
panel data.’
Read our Explainer on this research here