Who They Were There: Immigrants' Educational Selectivity and Their Children's Educational Attainment

This article examines the educational selectivity of immigrants in France—i.e. how their level education contrasts with that of non-migrants in their country of birth–and the influence of this on the educational attainment of their children. I combine the Barro-Lee data set (2010) with French TeO survey (2008–2009) to construct a measure of ‘relative educational attainment’, i.e. an’s position in the distribution of educational attainment among the population of the same and gender in the immigrant’s country of birth. I demonstrate that the level of immigrants’ educational attainment differs both between and within countries of origin. I then show the influence of immigrant parents’ relative educational attainment on their children’s educational, over and above family socioeconomic status in France. The intergenerational transmission cultural resources and subjective social status are the proposed sociological mechanisms that can for the intergenerational effect of immigrant educational selectivity.