ABSTRACT
Integrating migrant populations is a challenge for many countries, educational success of immigrants being key. This chapter provides insight into the underlying processes that immigrants face when they arrive in a receiving country. In a first step, by offering a small theoretical framework, we present well-established sociological mechanisms that explain unequal educational success in general and for immigrants specifically. We describe how both individual resources, such as family background and language skills, and institutions, such as education systems, explain unequal educational success. In a second step, by drawing on data from the PISA 2018 study, we demonstrate that individual resources and language use are (to some extent) responsible for the achievement gaps between second-generation immigrant and nonimmigrant students, which underscores the theoretical assumptions of our framework. In a last step, we discuss the effects of specific institutional features on immigrant achievement that are still under scientific scrutiny. We conclude with a perspective on future research. In sum, this chapter offers the reader an intuitive access to key processes that underlie the creation of unequal educational success between immigrants and natives by combining individual-level features like family background and resources with system features like the specific structure of the education system.
