Gender and Educational Achievement of Immigrant Children in Spain

Elizabeth Vaquera, University of South Florida
Grace Kao, University of Pennsylvania

Social science research on immigrants and their children has primarily focused on the United States whose history and identity is inextricably tied to the integration of diverse groups of people. However, many European countries now have significant shares of their populations that are from abroad. Moreover, this change has been more dramatic and accelerated in some of these countries. Spain is one such case. We use representative data from the Longitudinal Study of Families and Childhood (Pànel de Famìlies i Infancia) to examine the integration of youth by documenting nativity differences in the educational outcomes of immigrant children in Catalonia, the main immigrant-receiving region of Spain. We document generational and gender differences in students’ test scores in Mathematics, and Spanish and Catalan language. We pay particular attention to social integration and school attitudes to examine whether immigrant girls adjust to life in Spain differently from boys.