The value of education among immigrants and non-immigrants and how this translates into educational aspirations: a comparison of four European countries

Starting out from the frequent empirical finding that immigrants exhibit higher educational aspirations than non-immigrants, we analyse the role of immigrants’ value of education, i.e. the subjective belief that education is beneficial for one’s life, in idealistic and realistic educational aspirations in four distinct institutional settings, comparing Sweden, Germany, the Netherlands and England. While the first part of the analyses relates to how immigrants differ from non-immigrants in the value they assign to education, the second part centres on country differences considering immigrant integration policies and education systems as crucial factors. A third part relates to the links between the value of education and educational aspirations to gain some insight into how the value of education may contribute to educational decisions. Analyses are based on longitudinal data of the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Survey in Four European Countries (CILS4EU). While results show that immigrants assign a higher value to education, the value of education does play a minor role in idealistic and realistic educational aspirations. The results of the country comparison are rather ambivalent, including very weak support for the argument that immigrants strive for education to a higher extent in countries with less favourable conditions.