Similar parental capital and similar grades for migrants and native pupils? Investigating parental economic, cultural and social capital as determinants of grade achievement.

Abstract

This work investigates differences in grade achievement of western native and non-western migrant pupils. It is expected that pupils with a migration background perform less well compared to natives and that these differences result from lower levels of economic, cultural and social capital their parents have. Furthermore, the grades of native and migrant pupils can be differently affected by the capital of their parents. Moreover, this works regards possible interrelations and overlap between economic, cultural and social capital and accounts for the problem that the capital concepts may be differently constituted for both groups. The hypotheses are tested by investigating mean differences and applying a multi-group hybrid structural equation model (SEM). A partly measurement invariant group-model is fitted, in which some of the capital indicators have different cross-loadings between groups. The expectations could only partly be confirmed. The results show that western natives outperform non-western migrants in Math, while migrants have better grades in English and are similar successful with regard to Dutch. The differences disappear in the fitted hybrid model, but the capitals seem to have nearly no effect on the grades. Only economic and cultural capital had an effect on Dutch grades for western native pupils. None of the grades of non-western immigrants was affected by their parental capital.