The immigrants and their children

The Children of Immigrants and HostSociety Educational Systems: Mexicans inthe United States and North Africans inFrance

RICHARD ALBA

City University of New York

ROXANE SILBERMAN

Paris School of Economics

Background/Context: The educational fate of the children of low-wage immigrants is asalient issue in all the economically developed societies that have received major immigrationflows since the 1950s. The article considers the way in which educational systems in the twocountries structure the educational experiences and shape the opportunities of the childrenof immigrants.Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: This article examines the experienceof the children of Mexican immigrants in the United States and of North African immi-grants in France. Both groups are low-wage labor migrants with low educational attain-ment relative to the native born.Research Design: The article uses data from the U.S. Census and the 2003 FormationQualification Professionelle Survey in France, as well as analysis of other research on thetwo countries to compare educational processes and attainment for the two groups.Conclusions/Recommendations: The comparison of the two systems shows that although theFrench and U.S. educational systems differ in many ways, the outcomes are in fact quitesimilar. In both systems, the children of low-wage labor migrants are tracked into the lowstreams of the educational hierarchy and have lower attainment than their native-bornpeers. At the same time, in both countries, a small percentage of children of immigrants domanage to succeed. The authors conclude that despite apparent differences between the two

Teachers College Record Volume 111, Number 6, June 2009, pp. 1444–0000Copyright © by Teachers College, Columbia University0161-4681

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systems, residential segregation and educational tracking produce these similar outcomes,which also reflect the determination of native-born middle-class parents to preserve theirprivileged status and thwart efforts to make the educational system more open.

Mexicans in the United States and North Africans in France represent inthese two countries the largest immigrant populations whose incorpora-tion can be viewed as problematic. The concern about successful incor-poration applies not just to the immigrant generation but also to thesecond generation, now quite numerous, as well. For the children ofthese immigrants, there is a high degree of commonality in their startingpositions and in their outcomes, at least as of the moment when theyleave the school system. Their parents have very low levels of education,and they enter complex educational systems in economically advancedsocieties where labor market position is determined largely by educa-tional credentials and experiences. This article attempts to identify thekey aspects in the school systems that determine the educational trajecto-ries of immigrant-origin and native youth and to ascertain the points ofsimilarity and difference between the systems.

THE IMMIGRANTS AND THEIR CHILDREN

Mexicans and North Africans both originate in countries that have suf-fered from proximity to the societies that now receive them. In the caseof Mexico, the conquest of the Southwest in the mid-19th century is butthe best known instance of the country’s vulnerability to its neighborfrom the north. In the case of North Africa, all the countries—Algeria,Morocco, and Tunisia—from which the immigrants have come were atone time either colonies of France or, in the case of Algeria, fully incor-porated into it. Nevertheless, the degree to which these immigrations canbe regarded as postcolonial is variable, with the Algerians marking theextreme case, given the vividness of the memories of the colonial periodand war of independence for the immigrants and for many French(Galissot, 1987; Lucassen, 2005)

The immigrants who are the parents of the contemporary second gen-eration have mostly arrived with very low levels of education by compari-son with those of U.S. and French natives. For example, about half of theimmigrant parents of Mexican American school-age children in the 2000Census did not go beyond the eighth grade (Hernandez, Denton, &McCartney, 2006). In the case of the North Africans, the lowest levels ofeducation are found among the Algerians, whereas Tunisians are muchmore highly educated (Tribalat, 1995).

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The second generation of both immigrant populations has made majorstrides, on average, beyond the low educational levels of their parents butremains well behind the educational attainment of natives, as demon-strated in Table 1 (FQP 2003 survey, Institut national de la statistique etdes études économiques; U.S. Census Bureau, 2000). In the U.S. case, thedata were drawn from 2000 census data and could not be limited to thesecond generation because of the absence of a parental nativity questionin the census; however, considerable research shows that in cross-sec-tional data such as these, there is not much difference between the edu-cational attainment of the second, third, and later generations (Farley &Alba, 2002). Hence, the educational distribution of the U.S.-born is asuitable proxy for that of the second generation.

AnglosBorn 1971–75,age 25–29 in2000

MexicanAmericansBorn 1971–75,age 25–29 in2000

Native FrenchBorn1969–1978, age25–34 in 2003

MaghrebinsBorn in France1969–1978, age25–34 in 2003

MalesNo secondarycredential

In the U.S., noHS diploma; inFrance, nodiploma otherthan BEPC 10.2 27.4 19.5 32.9

Basic secondarycredential

U.S. highschooldiploma; inFrance, CAP-BEP orbaccalauréat 27.6 31.1 44.2 42.4

Somepostsecondaryeducation 61.1 41.5 36.3 24.7TOTAL 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0%

Females

No credential 7.7 21.4 16.8 27.2Basiccredential

22.8 27.4 41.7 42.5

Somepostsecondaryeducation 69.5 50.9 42.5 30.3

TOTAL 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0%

Table 1. Educational Disparities for Second-Generation Mexicans and North Africans Compared With theNative Majority in France and the United States


The U.S.-born Mexican students suffer a considerable disadvantage bycomparison with their White peers, although the gap is not as large assome have claimed (e.g., cf. Alba, 2006; Huntington, 2004). A fifth to aquarter of young Mexican Americans have left high school without adiploma, condemning them to the lowest levels of the labor market. Thisfraction is 2 1/2 to 3 times the rate among non-Hispanic Whites. Asmaller disparity appears at the other end of the educational distribution,among those who gain some postsecondary education. It is noteworthythat almost half of Mexican American students now go beyond highschool. They are therefore positioning themselves to qualify for jobs thatare in the middle class, broadly construed.

Second-generation North Africans are also much more highly edu-cated than their parents (Silberman & Fournier, 2006b). However, theproportion of the Maghrebin second generation that leaves school with-out a useful diploma remains high.1 Even though the French educationalsystem has undergone a substantial democratization during severaldecades, second-generation Maghrebins who have left school recently—mainly young people who were born in France or entirely educatedthere—still show substantially higher percentages with no diploma orwith limited educational attainment. Nevertheless, the ratio of disparityin relation to the native French is not as high as its equivalent in theUnited States: Among both Maghrebin men and women, the percentagewithout a useful diploma is not quite twice its value among the nativeFrench. But the absolute values are higher than for Mexicans in theUnited States, with one third of second-generation men having leftschool with no diploma to present to prospective employers.

Insofar as its members obtain school credentials, the Maghrebin sec-ond generation more often leaves school with a diploma from an inter-mediate level, such as the general baccalauréat, which produces weakresults in the labor market. In terms of postsecondary education, thedegree of disparity in relation to the native French is very similar to whatis found in the United States: Among men, the native rate of universityattendance for at least a year is about 50% higher than the second-gener-ation rate, but the absolute levels are lower. Few of the Maghrebins earna university degree, and, as a group, they have now been surpassed in thisrespect by the Portuguese second generation (Silberman & Fournier,2006a), whose members have been said to prefer to take the short voca-tional tracks that lead to rapid entry to the labor market (Tribalat, 1995).As in the Mexican case, however, it is important to underscore that alarge percentage of the Maghrebin youth do at least obtain an interme-diate credential, and a smaller group finishes with a university degree.


OVERVIEW OF THE EDUCATIONAL SYSTEMS

The broad similarity of educational outcomes for second-generationMexicans and North Africans is all the more intriguing insofar as the edu-cational systems that these groups must negotiate appear, at least in theirformal descriptions, to differ in some critical ways.2 (Diagrams of thesesystems may help some readers to follow the ensuing discussion; a dia-gram of the U.S. system can be found in the Crul & Holdaway, 2009, arti-cle in this special issue; we present the French system as Figure 1.) Mostsignificantly, the U.S. system varies considerably from one location toanother, whereas the French system is organized to be more uniformacross the country. In theory, this difference should produce greater rel-ative disadvantages for Mexican Americans than for North Africans. Thatis, the funding of American schools is heavily dependent on locally raisedtaxes, producing marked inequalities among schools in resources and inthe qualifications of teachers (e.g., Kozol, 1991; Orfield, 2001). Theseinequalities impact negatively on minorities, both native and immigrant,because of residential segregation and the minorities’ concentration inplaces that are relatively impoverished. From the perspective of its orga-nizing principles, the French system, by contrast, should treat schoolsmore uniformly, reducing (but not eliminating) the opportunities foraffluent areas to provide their schools with greater resources. Moreover,in 1981, the French government put in place a policy, the ZEP (for Zonesof Educational Priority), to provide additional funding to schools in dif-ficulty according to criteria that include the percentage of immigrants inthe catchment area. The French system now also teaches a single curricu-lum up through the last class of the college, which corresponds to the U.S.middle school, so that the point of divergence into different tracks hasbeen postponed to the lycée, or high school (Merle, 2002). Far more thanis the case in the contemporary United States, then, France hasattempted to redress inequalities through the school system.

In a similar vein, the systems differ in the way that their public and pri-vate sectors relate to one another. Both countries have well-developedprivate-school systems. In the United States, about 10% of students areattending private schools in any given year (and an additional 2% areeducated at home); in France, the comparable figures are 14% at the pri-mary level and 20% at the secondary level, and a recent estimate is thatabout a third of students spend at least a year in the private system by thetime they have completed their secondary school years (Langouët &Léger, 1997). In both countries as well, the private system is frequentlyused as a refuge by students from middle-class and more affluent circum-stances whose families want to avoid public schools with many minority


and poor students. However, in the United States, the private system istruly separate, which means that at its elite levels, it can provide educa-tional resources far better than those available in the public schools. InFrance, by contrast, the private system, which consists mainly of religiousschools (with some nonreligious ones that are very well known and foundtypically in major cities), is much more integrated with the public system.As long as the private schools, mostly Catholic (Héran, 1995), agree toteach the national curriculum and accept the same constraints as thepublic schools (e.g., number of students in a class), they receive statefunding for the teaching staff, who mostly have the same qualifications aspublic school teachers. So, from the parents’ perspective, the main differ-ence with the public sector remains the avoidance, or at least low num-ber, of socially inappropriate children (because the private schools havecomplete freedom to select and expel students). It must also be notedthat the French private schools tend to be much less expensive than those

Figure 1. The Current French Educational System from Preprimary to Tertiary Education


in the United States, thereby allowing a few immigrant families to sendtheir children to them.

The French system has also undergone a significant “democratization”in recent decades, with the aim of opening up pathways for working-classand immigrant students to the “baccalauréat,” the indispensable creden-tial earned at the end of the high school years that leads to higher edu-cation. One sign of this democratization has been the successivepostponement, since the 1950s, of the moment in their educationalcareers when students are separated between vocational and academictracks (Prost, 1968); simultaneously, long-sequence vocational trackshave been established at the upper level. These developments have espe-cially affected the short-sequence vocational curricula (Silberman &Fournier, 2006a), which were previously the fate of many immigrant stu-dents and ended in an early departure from school and entry into thelabor market (see Tribalat, 1995). These separate curricula were formerlyinstitutionalized in distinct middle schools (the colleges), which sealed theseparation of the students on different tracks and also the destiny ofthose in vocational programs; now students attend comprehensive mid-dle schools that house various programs. Another major element ofdemocratization has been the creation of new types of baccalauréat,deemed “professional” or “technical.” They allow students who are notwilling, or allowed, to commit themselves to the classical curriculum ofthe traditional baccalauréat to take an educational track that preparesthem to continue into the university system (Merle, 2002). The explicitgoal of the democratization was to bring 80% of French students into aterminal class preparing for one or another baccalauréat. Nevertheless, by2003, only 70% of a cohort attained this level. Moreover, even thoughthere has been an important increase over 30 years in the proportion ofstudents obtaining this credential, from 20% to 62%, only 33% obtainthe academic baccalauréat, and just 20% do so on time.

The U.S. system offers second chances to an unusual extent; access topostsecondary education is potentially open to the large majority of eachcohort, because the only requirement is a high school diploma (whichcan even be earned through an equivalency test). Although the postsec-ondary system is highly stratified, with colleges and universities recog-nized as having varying quality and thus leading to different ultimateoutcomes, affirmative action at the university level enhances the access ofimmigrant minorities, especially to the elite tier of the university system(Bowen & Bok, 1998; Massey, Charles, Lundy, & Fischer, 2002). The link-age between education and the labor market is unusually loose.

In France, a feature of the system that in principle should benefit thechildren of immigrants is the preparation for schooling through mater-


nelles, which many children begin to attend at age 3 and which educatenearly all 4- and 5-year-olds in the country. The maternelles, by providinga common preparatory foundation to nearly all children and introducingchildren from immigrant homes into a French-language environment,are one way that the French system attempts to overcome the very differ-ent endowments that they receive from their families. One study of dif-ferences in the educational attainment of the children of Turkishimmigrants in different European countries credits the maternelles withthe somewhat more favorable outcomes achieved in France (Crul &Vermeulen, 2003); other studies, however, suggest that in general,improvement does not last beyond the end of the primary school(Oeuvrard, 2000).

The French system is more explicitly articulated than the U.S. system,and it contains more branches once the secondary level is reached. TheFrench system also offers a much wider array of credentials, many ofwhich are linked fairly explicitly to labor market outcomes, a characteris-tic that is a product of the social planning of the post-World War II period(Tanguy, 1991). Access to university education has been quite selectiveuntil the recent reform aiming to democratize the system; however,access remains more selective than in the United States.

One issue that each system has struggled to deal with is the presence ofchildren who reside illegally in the country. The number of such childrenis very large in the United States; by one well-accepted estimate of the sizeof the undocumented population, nearly 2 million children fall into thiscategory. Another 3 million children are U.S. born and therefore U.S. cit-izens but live in families in which at least one parent is undocumented(Passel, 2006). Their right to an education at the primary and secondarylevels has been guaranteed by a decision of the U.S. Supreme Court; how-ever, the right of undocumented individuals to a university education isless clear, especially because they cannot receive public monies. It isthought that many of these children drop out of school without anydiploma because without legal status, their education is of little use in theU.S. labor market, but there are no systematic data about their educa-tional attainment.

In France, the situation of such children is also difficult, in large partbecause of an absence of clear policy. The question of students “withoutpapers,” as the French expression puts it, can be posed at all levels of theeducational system. In the mid-1980s, Pierre Chevènement, the thenMinister of Education, reaffirmed by specific instructions to the schoolsthe principle of educating all children regardless of their legal status.Policy toward them hardened, however, as the undocumented immigrantpopulation grew and when the right returned to power. Moreover, the


practices at the local level (the mayor’s office generally registers childrenfor primary school) are diverse. Nevertheless, it is apparent that a largenumber of children in irregular situations are being educated at all lev-els of the French system. Matters became quite tense at the end of the2005–2006 school year, when many of these children were threatened by expulsion, and many French parents and teachers took their side.Nicolas Sarkozy, then the Minister of the Interior, was forced to retract hisdeadline and to put in place a procedure for reviewing requests for regularization.

Thus, despite the formally greater uniformity of the school system inFrance and its more systematic efforts to democratize schooling, theresults achieved for the children of disfavored immigrants from NorthAfrica are similar to those obtained by the children of Mexican immi-grants, an equally disfavored group, in the United States, where theschool system varies enormously from one locality to another andbetween its public and private sectors. The rest of this article is devotedto understanding how the educational differences between the childrenof immigrants and the children of the native born emerge throughincreasingly disparate trajectories.

THE PRIMARY SCHOOL SYSTEM

In both countries, the differences among population groups begin to beconstructed at the elementary school level, though probably moreimportantly in the United States. To begin with, there is very substantialsegregation of second-generation children from middle-class majority-group children. In both countries, this is largely a function of well-entrenched residential segregation, which results in concentrations ofminority and majority families in different jurisdictions, as much as seg-regation by neighborhood within the same city; thus, in the UnitedStates, European American families with schoolage children tend to befound in heavily White suburbs, whereas similar minority families aremore often located in large cities or inner suburbs. These residential pat-terns are nearly the reverse of those in France, where immigrant minori-ties are concentrated in specific suburbs (banlieues) around major cities.But the impact on school segregation is probably equivalent.

Recent analyses from the United States demonstrate that Latino chil-dren, along with Black children, are increasingly likely to be found inheavily minority elementary schools, partly because of the declining pro-portion of European American children among the schoolage popula-tion, and then among those attending public schools (Orfield, 2001). Wehave no comparable systematic data on school segregation from France,


but because immigrants are frequently concentrated in separate munici-palities in the suburbs (Guillon, 1990; Preteceille, 1995), a fairly highlevel of segregation is implied. Recent studies have shown that in theschools qualifying for the ZEP program, where immigrants’ children areparticularly concentrated, social homogeneity has been increasing(Benabou, Kramarz & Prost, 2004).

In both systems, school choice is limited. In the United States, the prin-ciple determining where a child is educated at public expense stillreflects the concept of the “neighborhood school,” despite attempts,especially from more conservative parts of the political spectrum, to cre-ate opportunities for more parental choice. In France, the governmenthas increasingly limited school choice in recent decades, imposing amapping of addresses to schools (carte scolaire). This practice was in factan attempt to restrict the ability of more affluent families to avoid localschools with many poor and/or immigrant students, but at the sametime, it implies as a matter of policy that school composition will reflectthe local resident population and thus that schools will be segregated inthe same way as the neighborhoods. For those affluent parents who findthat the carte scolaire will send their children to the socially “wrong”school, private schools are always an option, and in fact they are fre-quently used at the primary level.

In the American case, this school-based segregation of children corre-sponds with disturbing levels of inequality in school funding that createdisadvantages for schools serving heavily minority populations. This isnot simply traceable to the heavy reliance of American school systems onlocally based sources of funding. The evidence shows that there are sig-nificant disparities among the individual schools within local systems;these disparities are probably explicable in terms of the political leader-ship of school systems because school boards are elected and often mostresponsive to more affluent, better educated parents (Condron &Roscigno, 2003; Kozol, 1991).

These inequalities are probably enhanced by features that provide amore enriched educational experience in schools to children from mid-dle-class European American backgrounds.3 Although curricula are, tosome degree, standardized across schools—at least in the sense that statesdefine minimal standards that must be met for different subjects in eachgrade, and the testing movement has further strengthened the role ofstandards—schools that are more resource rich and serve middle-classpopulations are able to offer their students many educational supple-ments to the minimum standards, so that differences in learning growover time (Kozol, 1991). Also playing a role in the development ofinequalities is so-called ability grouping. Ability grouping is an informal


tracking process that often occurs within classrooms, whereby teachersgroup students according to their knowledge of a given subject, such asreading, and their presumed facility to make progress (e.g., rapid vs. slowlearners).

Inequalities in school funding are far more limited in France, thoughthey exist and have increased in recent years. Since the end of the 1990s,the national government has decentralized an increasing share of thefinancing of, and decision making about, local schools (Henriot-VanZanten, 1990; Louis, 1994). It has nevertheless retained the budget forteachers, the single most important factor determining the level ofinequality. The financial support provided for the teaching staff in aschool is, moreover, a function of the numbers of students and classes,and the Ministry of Education strictly controls the number of studentsper class. The ability of even school principals to exert an influence overthe teaching budget remains limited.

Moreover, social inequalities may be partly counterbalanced throughthe increased funding for schools in areas with social problems. The so-called ZEP policy provides supplementary support for the teaching staffat such schools, with an aim of reducing the number of students per class.Eleven percent of the primary schools are under the ZEP, but little dataexist to establish the extent of the reductions in class size due to the pol-icy. In any event, the pressures to reduce class size are also powerful onthe schools serving more affluent areas, because the parents there adver-tise it to school administrators as a major factor in deciding whether theywill send their children to the public school. They can find justification,if they need it, in a recent study that seems to demonstrate that whenclasses at the primary level are reduced by two children, school achieve-ment improves (Piketty, 2004).

Inequalities have clearly sharpened in domains where funding anddirection have traditionally been under the control of local and regionalauthorities. Thus, the authorities have had charge of budgets for the pur-chase of schoolbooks, equipment, and other resources. They also have anew responsibility for the construction and maintenance of school build-ings, which is leading to notable differences among areas in the condi-tion and modernization of school structures (just as in the United States,it should be added).

Perhaps even more important for the development of inequalitiesbased on residence is the role of local authorities in financing supple-mentary activities and functions (Dutercq, 2000). They are responsiblefor the supervision of children during school vacations (which arenumerous in France), when their parents are unable to take care of themduring the workday. These periods of supervision have taken on more


and more of a pedagogical character (e.g., trips to the theater) and playan increasing part in the access of children from poor or immigrant fam-ilies to cultural resources. Such families sometimes send their children tothe vacation supervision even when a parent is at home because the costis modest. Similarly, the primary schools offer after-school care, generallyfor 2 extra hours, for which parents have to pay a modest fee but whichthey can ask the local authorities to pay. Since the 1970s, some schoolshave tried to use these supplementary hours (les “etudes”) to help stu-dents with their homework, with the aim of reducing socially basedinequalities.

The connection of the development of inequalities linked to social ori-gin with supplementary school activities is better illustrated by the so-called nature classes (classes de nature). They include excursions with apedagogical character and even exchanges with other countries, the lat-ter often connected with instruction in foreign languages, which nowbegins in the maternelles. These classes are partly financed by local author-ities and partly by parents, thus placing children from poor families at adisadvantage (although limited numbers of scholarships, bourses, are gen-erally available). The schools in the more affluent areas organize suchactivities more frequently because of the pressures of parents to providethis form of cultural and educational enrichment and their willingness topay the costs (Glasman, 2001).

U.S. schools have made more deliberate efforts than those in France tomeet the educational needs of students coming from minority-languagehomes, though these efforts, especially when based on bilingual strate-gies, have been contested and uneven. That these students are entitled toequal educational opportunities has been established by court decision,specifically the Supreme Court’s Lau decision in 1974. However, what isrequired to create equal educational opportunity differs considerablyacross states and has changed over time. Indeed, the term bilingual educa-tion has become more a political code word—reflecting polarized opin-ions over the appropriate policies for immigrant-origin and minoritystudents—than a reference to a specific set of school policies. Thus, thepractices encompassed by the term are quite varied, ranging from edu-cating students for most of the school day in the minority language toplacing them for limited periods of time in classes that teach English asa second language. In recent years, these policies have been constrainedby referenda in some states. This process began with a heavily financedcampaign in California, led by the entrepreneur Ronald Unz, that suc-cessfully imposed new requirements on student participation in bilingualprograms (schools now need an annual letter from parents requestingtheir child’s placement in a bilingual classroom, and these requests are


honored only if the parents have visited the school). Although the prac-tical effects of the California referendum are still not clear, there can beno doubt that it has placed a large question mark on the future of bilin-gual education.

French schools have provided less in the way of assistance to ease stu-dents who speak languages other than French into mainstream class-rooms. In some schools, classes of “reception” (classes d’accueil [CLIN] inthe primary school) exist to help newly arriving immigrant studentsmake the transition into regular classrooms (Lorcerie, 1994). They wereintended to provide only a few months of preparation, but several stud-ies have shown that students have been relegated to these classes for longperiods and that even some French students coming from areas outsidethe metropole (e.g., the Antilles) have been placed in them. There werealso attempts, especially during the 1970s, to provide courses in the lan-guage and culture of the immigrant students’ countries of origin, taughtby instructors named by these countries. The purpose was more to culti-vate the students’ respect for their heritage countries than to provide atransition to mainstream classes. However, the success of the courses wasdisputed, in any event, and even some immigrant parents were againstthem. A report issued in 1985 (Berque, 1985) argued that the policy wasfailing because of stigmatization of the students who were participatingand of weak control over the teachers and what they were teaching,among other factors. The children of immigrants are probably furtherdisadvantaged by the relatively recent policy of introducing foreign lan-guage instruction at an early age; it now begins in the maternelles (in afflu-ent areas) or in the primary schools. Because the first foreign languageis usually English, the children from immigrant families are confrontedwith the need in the beginning school years to learn two unfamiliar lan-guages—the other, of course, being French.

It is difficult to know how much the children of immigrants have ben-efited from the policies that have been tried during the last 20 years tohelp children who have difficulties in school. At various times, schoolshave been permitted to establish ability groupings within primary grades,allowing students to pursue coursework at different speeds and to differ-ent depths; officially, this policy has had the aim of helping studentsavoid repeating the year, but in practice, it also helps the better students.Consequently, the policy has been exploited by some school principals toretain students from middle-class families. Extremely contested, the pol-icy has been allowed only sporadically. In any event, the practice ofrequiring students to repeat the school year, which is far more wide-spread in France than in the United States, plays a significant role in cre-ating inequalities between the children of immigrants and native


students. (In the United States, by contrast, the criticism has been thatunprepared students are pushed ahead by so-called social promotion.)Retention in grade, which must be recommended by the teaching staffand can be appealed by parents, is concentrated at key transitionalmoments in the educational career, including the 1st and 3rd years of pri-mary school, the 1st and 4th years of middle school, and the 1st year ofhigh school. The children from immigrant families have been more likelythan native French children to be required to repeat a school year.Although there have been attempts to limit grade repetitions, the prac-tice continues to return and even to develop (Paul, 1996). According todata for 1995, the children of immigrants were much more likely thanthe others to be 1 or 2 years behind at the entry to middle school (Caille,2005).

MIDDLE AND HIGH SCHOOL LEVELS

In both systems, the inequalities among students that have developed atthe primary school level are enhanced at the secondary school level andare frequently expressed in formal ways through provision of differentcurricula or placement in different tracks. The college and lycée are theFrench equivalents to the American middle school and high school,respectively. In both systems, entry to the lower of these levels—middleschool and college—occurs usually after 6 years of primary education.There is some variability in the United States in the grade range includedin primary schools, because in some places, the same schools containgrades from kindergarten to eighth grade.

Some previously noted aspects of the primary school systems carry overinto the secondary school level. Most significant is school segregation,even though secondary schools generally have larger catchment areasthan do primary schools. School segregation is thus somewhat reducedthrough the larger areas covered by secondary schools, but it does notcease to be an important consideration. Likewise, in the United States,where there is school segregation, there is, correspondingly, inequality ofresources largely due to the role of local funding bases.

However, starting at the lower secondary school level and developingfurther at the higher one, segregation of students within school buildingstakes on a larger role in the creation of learning inequalities among stu-dents according to social origin. This is the phenomenon of tracking, forwhich an extensive literature exists in the United States (e.g., Oakes,2005). Tracking can occur in the form of disparate curricula that deter-mine students’ coursework once they are placed in a track; thus, studentsmay take vocational courses that are intended to help them find jobs


when they leave secondary school, or they may take academic courses,many of which overlap with university-level coursework and are intendedto prepare them to enter universities. Tracking also frequently occurs ona subject-by-subject basis, so a student may be placed in an acceleratedclass in mathematics and a normally progressing one in English.However, research has established that there are correlations betweenstudent placement in different subjects; students placed in rapidlyadvancing classes in one subject tend to be placed in such classes in someother subjects as well (though not necessarily in all), whereas thoseplaced in one slowly moving class tend to be found in others also.Research has further shown strong correlations between these place-ments, and class, racial, ethnic origins. Consequently, many schools thatdo not appear to be segregated from outside the building—the stream ofstudents entering in the morning is quite diverse—are strongly segre-gated within them, so that middle-class White students have little contactwith fellow minority students within classrooms, and vice versa.

One of the unclear aspects of American school systems is the corre-spondence of family and student aspirations with educational experienceat this crucial level of the system. Surveys routinely show that minoritystudents and their families typically cherish high educational aspirations,extending to professional and postgraduate degrees. Second-generationstudents in particular have been characterized as exhibiting optimismabout their futures (Kao & Tienda, 1995), which may help them weatherinitially unfavorable educational experiences. However, the realities ofstudent placement and achievement in secondary schools often are atodds with high aspirations.

For many minority students whose aspirations are thwarted in theschool system, the risk is that they will become engaged in oppositionalsubcultures and their “failure” crystallized. The idea that oppositionalcultures appeal to minority youth because of their experiences and fearsof rejection is traceable to the work of John Ogbu and his collaborators(e.g., Fordham & Ogbu, 1987). Although their formulation has been dis-puted, it seems unassailable that groups of alienated students form in sec-ondary schools and engage in risky behavior (e.g., deviant acts, such aspetty crime and drug use) while disengaging from academic work; thisdisengagement can be manifested in irregular attendance, refusal to doassignments both in and out of the classroom, failure of courses, andeventual dropping out. Students on these trajectories are usually sup-ported socially and psychologically by similarly inclined peers. Althoughsome European American students become involved in such opposi-tional subcultures, minority students are at greater risk because of theiruncertainties about acceptance by mainstream teachers and educational


institutions, if not outright experiences with discrimination, and greateranxieties about their future. Entry into oppositional subcultures is impli-cated to some extent in the higher dropout rates of Hispanics andAfrican Americans, especially boys.

The extent to which minority students can be protected from the risksassociated with oppositional cultures by engagement with ethnic andimmigrant cultures has been the subject of considerable research anddebate. The “segmented assimilation” perspective formulated byAlejandro Portes and his collaborators (e.g., Portes & Zhou, 1993) assertsthe positive and protective role that ethnic cultures can play, and theresearch of Zhou and Bankston (1998) has provided supportive evidencefrom a study of the Vietnamese of New Orleans. This line of argumentsuggests that maintenance of the immigrant language by the second gen-eration is a key to avoiding the risks of “premature” acculturation and theemulation of oppositional models of behavior and thinking. However,the role attributed to language has created doubts about the generalvalidity of this line of argument; the most successful second-generationgroups are of Asian origin and tend not to be bilingual to any greatextent in the second generation, whereas Mexicans and other Latinos, inwhich second-generation bilingualism is most concentrated, have farhigher rates of school failure and dropout (Portes & Rumbaut, 2001).Because some research shows that bilingual students earn better grades,it is clear that the relationships among these factors need far moreresearch and may be contingent on ways that have yet to be specified(Lutz, 2004).

It should be noted that although majority students may also participatein oppositional school cultures, they are less likely than immigrant-originand minority students to suffer the full consequences of their participa-tion. Undoubtedly, this fact is attributable to the many second chancesafforded by the U.S. system and the greater resources of their families.For instance, the greater economic resources of their families mean thatmany majority students are better able to weather periods of idleness andto take advantage of opportunities to recover academically, such as pri-vate tutoring or academies for troubled students. As an indication of thesignificance of these differences over the long term, the New YorkSecond Generation Project has found that the rates of arrest for criminalbehavior are quite similar between native Whites and immigrant youthbut that the consequences are quite different, with the children of immi-grants and those of native minorities suffering more severely (Kasinitz,Mollenkopf, Waters, & Holdaway, 2008).

In France, the ability of parents to select the middle school of their chil-dren has become increasingly limited in recent decades. However, in the


same period, the college has become the most problematic stage of theschool system partly because of the democratization of the French educa-tional system, which has unified once separate curricula (academic andvocational). In the suburbs, with their high concentrations of immigrantand poor families, the college is the site of considerable violence begin-ning with the second year. Dropping out, which often takes the form ofchronic absenteeism, is a common phenomenon during the 3rd and 4thyears. Moreover, since the 1980s, there has been a growing decentraliza-tion of authority at this level of the system (Legrand, 2000; Louis, 1994)that has widened differences among middle schools. Thus, local andregional authorities have increasing financial responsibility for the main-tenance of school buildings and for the acquisition of educational mate-rials, such as books—matters that were previously in their domain onlywith respect to primary schools. Even more recently, they have acquiredthe responsibility for hiring auxiliary personnel, such as guards andsocial workers, who play an important role in the functioning of schoolsin the most disadvantaged areas. However, often these areas—for exam-ple, the immigrant suburbs—depend on municipal and regional govern-ments that are themselves strapped for resources. Hence, the inequalitiesamong the schools widen (Thomas, 2005; Trancart, 1998).

Parents who wish to prevent their children’s attendance at a school thatthey view as problematic often resort to the private school system afterthe 6th and final year of primary school. Some of these children thenreenter the public system at the high school level. Another strategy pur-sued by some parents pivots on the so-called hidden curricula (curriculacachés). These curricula involve the provision of instruction in difficultmodern or ancient languages (e.g., Japanese, Russian, Ancient Greek),or unusual courses developed by principals to raise the prestige of theirschools, such as the classes européennes, in which some of the instruction isin a foreign language such as English or German (Duru-Bellat & VanZanten, 1999). This sort of differentiation begins with the 3rd year ofmiddle school, when students start to study a second foreign language.The hidden curricula produce social segregation across schools—forexample, not all middle schools can offer unusual languages such asJapanese—and also within school buildings, creating differences betweenclasses similar to the effects of tracking in the United States (Duru-Bellat& Mingat, 1997).

The democratization of the school system has undoubtedly benefitedsome children of immigrants by postponing the point at which childrenbegin a purely vocational curriculum, thus giving them a longer periodof exposure to the same general curriculum that middle-class nativeFrench children receive. However, some native French families have suc-


cessfully thwarted the intent of the democratization policy by resorting tostrategies such as the hidden curricula (which can enable them to avoidthe school assignments of the carte scolaire). The schools themselves, inso-far as they serve children from such families, are pressed to create offer-ings targeted to them to prevent their flight to the private schools.Another divergence in the school careers of the immigrant working classand the native middle class occurs when children have problems inschools. Middle-class native French families make use of tutoring or theplacement of their children in special courses given after school hours.These courses are taught by regular teachers who are paid extra by theparents to instruct small groups of students, often in mathematics. Suchadditional instruction, which generally takes place off the schoolgrounds, has become a common supplement at all levels of the school sys-tem. It appears that immigrant parents, even when they hold very higheducational aspirations for their children, do not take the same measuresas natives to support their children who have difficulty in school(Brinbaum, 2002). This difference then adds to the cumulative inequali-ties that the children coming from immigrant families suffer throughouttheir time in school.

Further, the beneficial counterbalancing effects of the ZEP policy,which has concentrated more on colleges than on the primary schools, arefar from clear. The policy attempts to attract experienced teachers withbonuses and to avoid having schools in disadvantaged neighborhoodsbecome mere transit stations for teachers who are attempting to gainexperience at the beginning of their careers. However, its success hasbeen disputed (Brizard, 1995; Meuret, 1994): Because the bonuses forteachers are very small, schools in ZEP areas continue to be staffed by adisproportionate number of less experienced teachers. One recent study(Benabou et al., 2004) found that the impact of the ZEP policy on theeducational success of students has been very small.

The middle school stage is fateful for many students. By that time, alarge number of the children from immigrant families are already havingacademic problems at school. Qualitative studies have shown that theoppositional culture in evidence among the academically weaker chil-dren of minority origins, especially North African, emerges during thefirst years of middle school (Van Zanten, 2001). The academic future ofthe great majority of these children is already determined.

The measures that many middle-class families are prepared to take toavoid sending their children to a problematic middle school are justifiedin their eyes by the impact of the reputation of the middle school on thequality of the high school the children can enter. The lycée attended hasa pronounced impact on the rest of a young person’s educational career


and is especially determinative of the chance to enter the most elite track,the so-called classes préparatoires, which prepare for the competitive exam-inations to the grandes écoles, the Ivy League of French higher education.The differences in quality among high schools are recognized to such adegree that the media have published their national rankings, forcingthe Minister of Education to publish his own ranking (which wentbeyond those in the media by taking into account not just the results onthe baccalauréat examinations but also estimates of the “value added” byeach school). Because of the critical role presumed to be played by thehigh school, and hence the resistance of middle-class families, the statehas had to weaken the rules of assignment of students to schools basedon where they live. However, at this level, the game becomes complex formany families because their children are allowed to express preferencesamong three schools located at varying distances from their residence.This system has helped some children of immigrants in the suburbs whocan opt to attend a school outside their area. But the admissions are inthe hands of the schools themselves. Thus, the system puts a premium oninformed choices by students and their families, and this factor operatesin favor of native families and to the disadvantage of less knowledgeableimmigrant families (Broncholini & Van Zanten, 1997; Gilotte & Girard,2005). In any event, geographic proximity continues to be the dominantfactor determining where children attend high school.

The lycées comprise schools that provide a general academic and tech-nological curriculum on the one hand, and those deemed “professional,”which offer vocational training, on the other. This mix is a product of aunification in the 1980s; previously, there was a total separation betweenthe general or academic lycées and those offering other curricula. Thepartial unification is linked to the democratization initiative and wasaccompanied by the creation of the technical baccalauréat alongside theacademic one. At that point, a portion of the students who previouslywould have attended the vocational lycées began to attend the generalschools, choosing their curriculum at the end of the second year. Aresponse to the unification has been increasing differentiation by pres-tige among the academic curricula themselves: Students specialize in sci-entific, literary, or economic and social tracks, each of which has its ownbaccalauréat, but there is now a more strongly marked hierarchy amongthe different academic baccalauréats, with the highest status attached tothe scientific credential. The technical baccalauréat is, moreover, lower ingeneral status than the academic credentials, though it still providesthose who earn it with access to higher education. It should be noted,however, that the most prestigious lycées, such as the famous Henri IV in


the 5th arrondissement of Paris, offer few, if any, technical tracks. Thisevolution in the French lycée system appears to demonstrate that eachattempt at unification for the purpose of greater equality of chances iscounterbalanced by a further differentiation that preserves the privilegesof the upper reaches of the system (Duru-Bellat & Kieffer, 2000).

Paralleling the academic and technical lycées are now the professionallycées. At the end of middle school, a portion of the students definitivelyleave the academic track and enter into the professional high schools,where they can earn vocational diplomas such as the CAP and BEP (thecertificate d’aptitiude professionnelle and the brevet d’études professionnelles,respectively) in 2 or 3 years, or the baccalauréat professionnel, which pro-vides access to professional tracks in postsecondary education. Thesevocationally oriented lycées are a major pathway for the separation of stu-dents with academic and other difficulties from their cohorts, and theyare the sites of massive problems in the suburbs because of high rates ofabsenteeism and violence. At the end of the college, about 40% of studentsenter a lycée professionnel, according to a 1995 educational panel study. Afurther differentiation among the vocational tracks is linked to theoptions they lead to. The French vocational diplomas are very specializedand connected to a supposed future position on the labor market. Herealso some degree of hierarchy is apparent (for instance, diplomas in elec-tronics are ranked very high), depending on the return on the labor mar-ket. One problem is that despite constant advertising to encouragestudents to choose vocational tracks, there are not enough places toaccommodate students’ preferences. This is a major source of frustrationfor immigrants’ children, especially for the Maghrebins, as demonstratedby different surveys (Brinbaum & Kieffer, 2005; Silberman & Fournier,1999). In some cases, a desired option is available only in a very distantlycée, a source of further discouragement for girls because their parentsare reluctant to let them travel so far.

An important difference between France and the United States lies inthe credentials that are earned at the end of secondary school. In theUnited States, the credential that matters is the high school diploma,which is the pathway to further education, almost regardless of the cur-riculum and the school and where it is earned. Indeed, the system evenprovides for the possibility of earning its equivalent outside of school, theso-called General Education Development (GED), which is acquired bypassing a test. The GED can also be acquired through educational expe-riences provided by the U.S. armed forces in preparation for enlistment.(The military services require a high school diploma or its equivalent forenlistment. However, the Army has an Education Plus Program that aims


to attract minority youth who have dropped out of school; it pays for spe-cial training to enable a potential enlistee who meets certain criteria topass the GED examination.)

The French system offers a more complicated menu of diplomas andcredentials that can be earned at the secondary level. An important char-acteristic of the system is in fact that it offers relatively easy access to var-ious tracks but more rigorous selectivity when it comes to diplomas,which are unmistakably ranked. Thus, the short-sequence vocationaldiplomas, such as the CAP and BEP, do not provide access to the univer-sity system. The new baccalauréats, the technological and professional(earned by 18% and 12%, respectively, of the class of 2003), created aspart of the democratization initiative, do provide such access. However,they are ranked below the academic baccalauréat, which has itself sepa-rated according to subjects of specialization that are in turn ranked.Nevertheless, the new baccalauréats have opened roads to the tertiarylevel, especially to vocational tracks in the lower tertiary level. But it mustalso be noted that the proportion of a cohort attaining the upper tertiarylevel remains lower than is the case in the United States.

Confronted by the crises of the immigrant suburbs, where many youthsabandon school with no meaningful credential, the French governmenthas recently attempted to reinstitute the pathway of apprenticeship(where work and classroom education are linked). It has lowered to 14the age at which an apprenticeship may be pursued. However, a disadvan-tage of this pathway for Maghrebin youngsters is that it requires anemployment contract. Because the schools take no responsibility forsecuring these contracts, the requirement forces the North Africans toencounter the difficulties they will later face as prospective workers: theunwillingness of many employers to take them on. Research has shownthat the employment contracts required by apprenticeship programs areoften procured by students’ relatives. In this respect, the family networksof the Maghrebins are less effective than those of other groups, such asthe Portuguese, whose families can find places in the ethnic niches thatthe group controls in, for example, construction (Silberman & Fournier,1999).

POSTSECONDARY EDUCATION

A high proportion of U.S. high school graduates enter postsecondaryeducation, where they encounter far more differentiation and hierarchythan exists at the secondary level. These variations include great differ-ences in levels of selectivity and major inequalities in the benefits of thecredentials that students ultimately obtain. This differentiation begins


with the distinction between 2- and 4-year colleges. The 2-year collegetrack encompasses a mixture of curricula, with some curricula providingvocational credentials intended to be the endpoint of the scholasticcareer and to link students directly with jobs; other curricula offer gen-eral academic preparation that allows students to transfer to a 4-year col-lege (Brint & Karabel, 1989). Four-year colleges offer the more esteemeddegrees, which can be earned through a general liberal arts education orpreprofessional training (e.g., premedical concentrations). A substantialnumber of 4-year college graduates will, either immediately or after a few years in the labor market, enter postgraduate programs that yield advanced academic degrees, ultimately the PhD, or professionalcredentials.

All research demonstrates that social origins correspond quite stronglywith students’ enrollment in a 2- or 4-year college. This is a consequenceundoubtedly of differences in academic careers prior to this branchingpoint: On average, middle-class European American students can presentstronger academic records and test scores, qualifying them more easilyfor admission to a 4-year college. In addition to having weaker highschool records, the children of working-class immigrants may feel lessconfident about their ability to complete a 4-year academic program, ifonly because of economic pressures, and they may also be uncertainabout the wisdom of the choice between vocational and academic train-ing given their circumstances. The correlation between social origins andcollege entered, along with the frequently slow progress of 2-year collegestudents and the high rate of failure at this level, has led some scholars tocharacterize the 2-year colleges as a false promise of social advancement(Brint & Karabel, 1989).

In addition, there is a powerful hierarchy evident among 4-year col-leges and universities. This is well known to all students applying foradmission and to their families, and rating the schools by such criteria asthe academic selectivity of their admissions is a game pursued by variousservices that publish guidebooks. It is also played by the colleges and uni-versities themselves, which attempt to influence key statistics used in therankings calculations (e.g., the rate of acceptance by admitted students).The hierarchy among the colleges and universities correlates with thesocial origins of their students and also with their postcollege trajectories.The most selective schools can usually boast of the highest proportions ofgraduates who go on to receive further educational training.

Yet, there are forces counteracting the social selection operating at thepoint of entry to the U.S. system of higher education. Most important arethe policies of affirmative action instituted by many schools, though theyare, to be sure, contested by conservatives and have been overturned in


some public universities, notably in California, Michigan, and Texas, bylawsuits or referendum. It is also hard to be sure how many students theyaffect. Research suggests, however, that affirmative action can have a pow-erful positive effect on the long-term opportunities of minority students(Bowen & Bok, 1998; Massey et al., 2002).

Because most professional training is not provided through 4-year col-lege programs, the final stage of the system for many students comprisespostgraduate academic or professional programs. In this respect, the U.S.system is different from European universities, where specializationbegins at entry to the university; in the United States, it is common forthe first 2 years of college to be regarded as an academic foundation, andfor specialization, insofar as it occurs, to be concentrated in the final 2years. Some specialization, such as in liberal arts subjects, is frequentlyregarded by students and their parents as a more intensive form of gen-eral intellectual training, to be followed by professional training in post-graduate programs. These programs can demand as many as 4 (or more)years of further education. Especially for students coming from weakereconomic backgrounds, enrollment must be balanced against considera-tions of expense and indebtedness and against forgone earnings.Consequently, by the postgraduate stage, rigorous prior selectivity has removed all but a tiny number of the offspring of working-class immigrants.

In France in recent decades, higher education has experienced a verypowerful democratization, linked to greater access to the baccalauréat,which, as noted, is the credential sine qua non for entry to the highereducation (and the reason that juries of the baccalauréat examination arealways presided over by a university faculty member). About a third of acohort now attains some level of higher education. Even with the democ-ratization, however, France still lags behind other economically advancedsocieties in this respect.

Moreover, higher education is very stratified, with the most prominentfeature the division between the grandes écoles and universities. Thegrandes écoles were founded in the Napoleonic era to educate civil servantsand engineers (training the universities did not provide); to them wereadded several grandes écoles that train business elites. The grandes écoles arethe most selective branch of higher education and, entry is strongly cor-related with social origin (a large proportion of entrants have parentswho are university professors). Some recent studies reveal that the socialhomogeneity of their students has increased in recent decades; enteringclasses have fewer and fewer children coming from the working class andother less privileged strata (Albouy & Wanecq, 2003). Preparation forentry, which is achieved through competitive examination for the strictly


limited number of places, begins with the choice of a lycée. It continuesafter completion of the lycée years with “classes préparatoires,” which aregiven in some of the best lycées of Paris and other large cities. Even thesepreparatory classes are highly selective: Entrance is based on the stu-dent’s record and takes into account grades received during the last 2years of the lycée, along with the school’s reputation. The classes prépara-toires provide a broad cultural education along with high-quality training,and they are themselves stratified because several of the Parisian lycéesproduce the main group of students who will succeed in the entranceexaminations for the grandes écoles. Success in the examinations thereforerequires a risky multiyear strategy based on a sound grasp of the educa-tional system and is consequently unthinkable for virtually all childrenfrom immigrant families. The top Parisian lycée, Henri IV, has recentlyproposed to institute a “preliminary” classe préparatoire to permit good stu-dents from the suburbs to attain this level. In fact, just a tiny number ofthese students currently succeed at the entrance examinations and cantake advantage of the free education that it provides (some students inthe grandes écoles are even treated as provisional civil servants and paidsalaries during their training). A growing number of less distinguishedprivate universities that charge tuition and provide engineering and business education have been added to the grandes écoles during the lasttwo decades; they provide another outlet for children from middle-classfamilies.

Access to the universities is automatic as long as the student possessesan academic or technological baccalauréat. The length of studies followsthe European model, with credentials acquired after 3, 5, and 8 years(the European Union has recently undertaken a unification at the ter-tiary level leading to some important changes in French university cre-dentials, for example, the creation of a master’s degree). However, therates of failure and of abandonment of studies during the 1st and 2ndyears are very high. A university education is largely free except for regis-tration fees, which have tended to increase in recent years but remainwell below the costs of an American university. However, the scholarshipsthat can be granted to students with limited financial resources are few innumber and minimal in monetary amounts. In fact, a large proportionof students coming from working-class and poor families must work whilethey attend the university, and doing so contributes to the high rate oftheir failure. Increasingly, some universities (e.g., the University of Parisat Orsay) are implementing methods of admitting students based ontheir lycée records even though such selectivity is supposedly forbidden.To be sure, access to certain subjects, such as medicine, is openly selec-tive: Medical training is linked to the hospital system, and admission is


based on a competitive examination. In addition, the Institut d’études poli-tiques in Paris (also known as Science Po) has a special status that allowsit to be selective because it prepares students for the competitive exami-nation for entry to the Ecole Nationale d’Administration, one of the grandesécoles and the training ground for the national political elite.

The attraction of the grandes écoles deprives the universities of a largeportion of the best students; at the same time, they are not adequatelyfinanced to educate the students they have. The French universities arewidely considered to be experiencing a grave crisis, and the separationbetween them and the grandes écoles is regularly challenged, but withoutmuch hope of achieving true reform. Students from working-class andpoor families, among them the great majority of the second generation,thus enter into a university system that is not well structured, and theycan quickly find themselves disoriented and heading for failure (Beaud,2000).

This is all the more true considering that new postsecondary tracks oftechnological and professional training have been created alongside thetraditional university curricula. They have met with great success, remov-ing another group of the better students from the main university sector.This is especially true for the university institutes of technology (IUT)that were created during the 1970s. It is also increasingly the case for thecurricula leading to the vocational certificate, Brevet de technicien supérieur(BTS), which are generally pursued at lycées after the baccalauréat hasbeen earned. These technological/professional tracks, which are selec-tive in their admissions and lead to diplomas that are advantageous in thelabor market, are all the more in demand now that bridges have been cre-ated to allow students to have subsequent access to the universities, wherethey can earn university diplomas, the licence, and master’s degrees.However, the universities are also developing more advanced tracks ofthis kind, leading to new credentials (DESS). These developments havebenefited many children of immigrants, who, numerous in the vocationaltracks in the lycées, are able enter the postsecondary professional tracksthanks to the technical and professional baccalauréats. This is notably thecase for many second-generation Portuguese but is much less so for theMaghrebins, who continue to prefer the academic curricula of the uni-versities. Finally, there is a third way into the postsecondary sector: train-ing for professions that have a middling status in France (e.g., socialworkers and physician’s assistants). Such tracks are particularly indemand among young women from modest backgrounds, includingmany who come from immigrant families.

In contrast with the United States, France has not developed policies ofaffirmative action and is, in principle, quite opposed to them. However,


the first initiative in this direction has been taken in the domain of highereducation. Science Po has created an avenue of access specifically for thebetter students coming from the lycées of the immigrant suburbs. The2005 riots throughout France will presumably stimulate more initiativeslike this one, though at the moment, such efforts remain extremely lim-ited and are very contested by the adherents of the so-called Republicanmodel. It is necessary to recognize in this context the rigidity of theFrench educational system: Second chances are difficult to find, eventhough various reforms have attempted to change the system. The direc-tion of evolution has been more toward the validation by the university ofvocational training than toward a veritable opening to allow students wholeft to return to complete advanced diplomas.

CONCLUSION

In both systems, the disparities between the native group and the chil-dren of immigrants are sizable, despite gains by the latter over time. InFrance, democratization has allowed the children of North African immi-grants to increase their educational attainment; more now earn the bac-calauréat and attend a university, though they complete universitycredentials less often than do their native French counterparts. In anyevent, democratization has also benefited the native French group,thereby thwarting any large reduction in the overall gap between groups.A similar story is found in the United States, where improvements inMexican American educational attainment over time have been morethan matched by improvements in the attainment of native-born Whites.As in France, the disparity in the attainment of university degrees is quitelarge at the upper end of educational distribution.

There are, nevertheless, differences in labor market outcomes. TheUnited States has a substantially lower unemployment rate; according toOECD data, the unemployment rate in France has been nearly twice ashigh in recent years as that in the United States. And there is little differ-ence in employment between second-generation Mexican Americansand native Whites, although there are differences in France between sec-ond-generation North Africans and the native group (Silberman &Fournier, 2006b).

The most intriguing part of the comparison is perhaps that such super-ficially different educational systems produce such similar results. Fromthe point of view of governance, the French and American systems wouldhave to be seen as opposites. The French system is mostly determined bypolicies and funding that originate from the national state and seem topromote egalitarianism, resulting in more equal resources for schools


serving socially disparate populations. By contrast, the U.S. system is verymuch driven by local and regional forces, with policies largely deter-mined by states and financing coming predominantly from localities andstates. The consequence is substantial inequalities among schools thatcorrespond with the social compositions of their student populations.Moreover, the French system has initiated policies to overcome sociallystructured inequalities in educational opportunity: the ZEP policy thatprovides additional financing to schools serving disadvantaged popula-tions, and the attempt to democratize access to the baccalauréat andhence to postsecondary education, including the universities. Althoughthe United States recently has attempted one major educational reform,the No Child Left Behind legislation, its effects are uncertain, and its programs are widely viewed as inadequately funded. It is unlikely to makemuch of a dent in the systemically rooted inequalities of educationalopportunity that are so evident when one looks across the national landscape.

Of course, when one peers beneath the surface, there are some unde-niable similarities: Most important is the way that social segregation, espe-cially by race (in the United States) and social class and ethnic origin (inboth France and the United States), shapes educational opportunity. Inthe United States, this shaping is very apparent and has been the subjectof a substantial literature; in France, such shaping occurs, too, bothbecause local authorities and parents retain an important influence onthe resources of schools and on what happens within them, and becauseschools that concentrate poor and immigrant-origin students are prob-lematic in ways that schools that serve middle-class native students arenot. Another similarity lies in the stratification within schools that but-tresses, and is buttressed by, the developing educational differencesamong students of different social origins. In France, this stratification ishighly formalized in the hierarchy of diplomas and certificates that canbe earned at both the secondary and higher educational levels. It also hasless formal manifestations, as in the so-called hidden curricula developedby some schools to attract more qualified students and students frommore privileged families. In the United States, tracking is less formal, butit is nevertheless a highly developed feature of school systems. It is imple-mented in the early years through ability groupings in classrooms andlater through subject matter classes that proceed at different paces andto different depths. The consequence of tracking is that the mere posses-sion of a high school diploma, the universal terminal secondary certifi-cate, tells very little about the academic preparation of an individual.

That two such different systems produce such similar results is, how-ever, more likely to be a consequence of the attempts of advantaged


native families, from the middle class or more affluent circumstances, toretain privileges for their children in the face of the prospective compe-tition from the children of recent immigrants—especially those from themost disfavored groups, such as the Mexicans in the United States andthe Maghrebins in France. What the French case in particular demon-strates is a kind of Newtonian Third Law of Social Inequality: For everyinitiative to reduce inequality, there is an opposing reaction to preserveit. Hence, in reaction to the initiatives of the state to promote greaterequality of educational opportunity (e.g., the ZEP policy), parents and,to some degree, local authorities have reacted by creating new mecha-nisms that give latitude for social inequalities to assert themselves in andthrough educational institutions. Examples are the hidden curricula andthe supplementary educational activities in schools for which familiesmust bear the cost.

For either system to greatly reduce educational inequality wouldrequire a step that contravenes one of its fundamental principles. In theUnited States, the principle of local control of schools is paramount butis the foundation of educational inequality because the funding ofschools is largely in the hands of local authorities and is effected mostlythrough the property tax. Given the cherished nature of this financingprinciple, it would be difficult to overturn, and attempts to provide amore level base of funding would undoubtedly be greeted with reactivedevices to restore inequality, such as voluntary funding of supplementaryresources and activities by parents (already a feature of some schools). InFrance, the virtual absence of affirmative action makes it very difficult toovercome systemically based ethnic inequalities and to give chances tothe children of immigrants from the more impoverished suburbs. But theprinciple of equality of individuals before the state, which is interpretedto imply no special treatment in favor of, or against, individuals based ontheir ethnic origin, is deeply enshrined in the French understanding ofits revolutionary heritage. Here, too, a contravention on a large scale,with the aim of promoting greater educational opportunity, is difficult toimagine.

Notes

1. The great majority of French students obtain the BEPC, Brevet d’études du premiercycle, which is awarded based on an examination at the end of the college, or middle school.However, unlike a U.S. high school diploma, this diploma is neither a qualification for auniversity education nor a credential with value in the labor market.

2. We have obviously not compared the degrees of inequality between natives and thesecond-generation students with controls for family background, as is customary in socialscience literature. One reason for this omission is that we are interested here in the other


side of inequality, in the institutions that “process” students, rather than in the families that“produce” them. In this sense, the comparison serves mainly as motivation. However, thereis another reason: We are not certain what the results mean when controls for parental char-acteristics are applied. When the parents are immigrants, there is a lack of commensurabil-ity with the characteristics of natives. It is most evident with education because of thedifferences in the educational systems from which the two sets of parents have emerged:The immigrants from Mexico and North Africa have generally an obtained education thatis average or above average for their societies of origin, but they are being compared withnatives who fall at the absolute bottom of the educational distribution of their own societiesand who are likely to suffer from a variety of personal and social problems that the immi-grant parents do not have. A similar point can be made about occupation.

3. One must not forget the importance of the educational experiences provided out-side of schools by families, which generally favor children from more affluent homes.Research has regularly shown, for instance, that children from poorer and minority back-grounds fall behind their peers during the summer, when schools are not in session(Entwisle & Alexander, 1992; Heyns, 1978).

References

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RICHARD ALBA is Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the Graduateand University Center of the City University of New York. His most recentbook is the award-winning Remaking the American Mainstream (2003),which he co-authored with Victor Nee.

ROXANE SILBERMAN is a researcher at the Maurice Halbwachs Centerat the Center at National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) and isalso the Secretary General of the Interministerial Committee for Data inthe Social Sciences. Among her recent publications are articles in Ethnicand Racial Studies and in the Revue française de sociologie that examine thecase of North Africans in France in the light of segmented-assimilationtheory.

Documents

The immigrants and their children