Migrant integration in a VET-oriented schooling system: a ladder hard to climb

Using a typology based on different forms of capital, we focus on migrant integration into the Swiss schooling system, as expressed by their track choice at upper-secondary level. In particular, we examine whether school transitions of children from certain migrant communities are negatively affected by a lack of social capital and apply for this purpose a two-step methodology based on the estimation of a reduced-form multinomial logit, using longitudinal data from the Canton of Geneva (Switzerland), for the period 1993-2007. While differing substantially between high-track and low-track students, results confirm that social capital matters independently of human and financial capital and, while affecting all students, the impact of a lack of social capital is higher on high-track students. Among low-track male students, recent migrants are disadvantaged compared to natives and first-wave migrants, as they are, ceteris paribus, more often oriented toward non-certifying remedial education. Moreover, we find that structural compositions of middle schools explain almost all the estimated yearly school fixed-effects and that compositional changes clearly do not affect low-track and high-track students in the same way.