ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the concrete educational careers of youngsters in secondary education. It demonstrates that besides the already well-documented evidence of the influences of gender, socioeconomic status and immigration history, elements that relate to the school and home environment and peer groups are also significantly related to doing well at school. Thus, children from different social as well as ethnic backgrounds arrive at school with different habitues from that exemplified by the school itself. The degree to which the youngster's family habitues are congruent with the school habitues will have an impact on the educational achievement barriers experienced by the youngster. Several studies focused on the intersection between gender and ethnicity. In a study on the Turkish immigrant communities in Belgium, for example, it was found that young girls saw a successful educational career as the most important and feasible instrument for emancipating themselves from patriarchal dominance.
