Pathways to Success - Spain

Conditioning factors of children of immigrants’ successful trajectories in Madrid

The aim of the project is to identify upward mobility careers of children of immigrants, in particular of those starting from lower socio-economic backgrounds, as well as the main factors influencing their educational and labor market success. It will focus on second generation (born in Spain) children of immigrants from contrasting groups, mainly those of Moroccan, Peruvian, Dominican and Chinese origin. The findings will then be made available to a wider public, in particular to those able to influence policies and channel actions for the support of these children.

As a first step, the project will look at the quantitative data on the Moroccan second generation gathered in the research project “The Integration of the Europen Second Generation (TIES)” analyzing those cases in the sample which show a successful trajectory. It will also look in so far as possible at available quantitative data on the other groups of origin considered in this study. This will help to identify types of trajectories which will be useful in the selection of the sample for the main part of the study. The main part of the study will consist of in-depth interviews to children of immigrants aged 20 to 35 years old of Moroccan, Peruvian, Dominican and Chinese origin with emerging upward mobility trajectories in different areas. The total number of interviews will depend on the number of differing trajectories that can be identified, but will be no less than 15 per origin.  On the one hand, the project aims at comparing differences in the trajectories and in the factors that influence them within and between groups. On the other hand, the Spanish data will be part of an international comparison, together with the data collected in the other European countries.

Project team: Prof. Dr. Rosa Aparicio, Dr. Lourdes Gaitán, and Jaime Goez (doctoral candidate)

Duration: 2012-2013

The research is a project of the Centre for Studies on Migration and Citizenship of the Instituto Universitario de Investigación Ortega y Gasset. It is funded by the Dirección General de Inmigración of the Community of Madrid.