Assimilation in a New Context: Second Generation Educational Attainment in Germany

Renee Luthra, University of California, Los Angeles

This paper utilizes a new data source, the 2005 and 2006 German Mikrozensus, to model the likelihood of competing secondary school outcomes among both foreign and naturalized children of guest workers, ethnic Germans, EU and third country immigrants. This paper reveals several new patterns. First, after controlling for parental socioeconomic status, the general trend among the children of immigrants is one of advantage relative to native Germans. Second, differences in achievement between immigrant origin groups cannot be explained by differences in legal status or context of reception. By allowing the effect of parental education to differ by ethnic origin, I link these new findings to the fact that the children of low skilled immigrants enjoy an “immigrant advantage” relative to the children of low skilled native Germans, performing better than would be expected from their parental characteristics alone.