ABSTRACT
When the results of the PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) survey were published in 2000, German politicians and the general public were deeply shocked (PISA 2003). Among the 43 OECD countries surveyed, Germany, the ‘land of poets and thinkers’, was placed in the bottom third with regard to reading, mathematics and other skills.1
Besides other structural factors – some of which will be mentioned later – migrants’ language capabilities became the focus of a public debate that attempted to justify the low average results attained by 15-year-old German pupils. But it would be an oversimplification not to recognize that migrants’ language skills, and those of their children, are related to their pattern of incorporation in their ‘host society’. Many scholars have argued that socio-cultural integration, in terms of language skills and educational attainment, is a prerequisite for successful economic or ‘structural’ integration. However, one could also argue that economic integration facilitates language learning and the acquisition or upgrading of other skills. Educational attainment, for instance, correlates strongly with marriage and reproduction patterns, as well as with labour market positioning. After introducing a typology of migrant incorporation patterns and suggesting how they could influence educational attainment, closer attention will be given to transnationalism as an increasingly significant addition to other well-established incorporation patterns and forms of internationalization.
