EDUMIGROM · Ethnic Differences in Education and Diverging Prospects for Urban Youth in an Enlarged Europe

The research project aims to study how ethnic differences in education contribute to the diverging prospects for minority ethnic youth and their peers in urban settings. Through a comparative endeavor involving nine countries from among old and new member states of the European Union, EDUMIGROM will explore how far existing educational policies, practices and experiences in markedly different welfare regimes protect minority ethnic youth against marginalization and eventual social exclusion. Despite great variations in economic development and welfare arrangements, recent developments seem to lead to similar consequences for certain groups of second-generation immigrants in the western half of the continent and Roma in Central and Eastern Europe. Formally citizens with full rights in the respective states, people affiliated with these groups tend to experience new and intensive forms of involuntary separation, social exclusion, and second-class citizenship. The project will critically examine the role of education in these processes of ‘minoritization’. In ethnically diverse urban communities, schools often become targets for locally organized political struggles shaped by a broader political and civic culture of ethnic mobilization. EDUMIGROM aims to investigate how schools operate in their roles of socialization and knowledge distribution, and how they influence young people’s identity formation. The project will also explore how schools contribute to reducing, maintaining, or deepening inequalities in young people’s access to the labor market, further education and training, and also to different domains of social, cultural, and political participation. The results of macro-level investigations, a comparative survey and multi-faceted field research in local settings will provide rich datasets for intra- and cross-country comparisons and evidence-based policy making.