Next GRITIM-UPF Research Seminar by Silvia Carrasco Pons (Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona):

Date: 7th March 2019

Time: 18:00 – 21:00

Place: UPF – Campus Ciutadella, Room 40.246. Jaume I Building, UPF Ciutadella Campus, Carrer Ramon Trias Fargas 25-27, Barcelona.

Title: "Early School Leaving among youngsters with an immigrant background in the EU and its impact on social integration."

Abstract: The children of immigrants are widely overrepresented in the ESL rates in most EU countries with the highest proportions found in Spain, where deep changes in economy and public policy cutbacks place them most at risk of unemployment and exclusion. In the prevention of ESL the need of raising aspirations and increasing support is usually highlighted while the paradox between high aspirations and low achievement persists among them. During the session, some recent research results will be presented to reconstruct the processes experienced by a group of students considered at risk of ESL and focused on the relationship between students’ aspirations and families’ and teachers’ support as perceived by the youngsters themselves. The analysis draws on data from a longitudinal qualitative approach and is based on youngsters still in school, in out-of-school programmes and in NEET status. Our findings reveal that in spite of their families’ diverse support students’ aspirations are often neglected. The kind of teachers’ support received along their trajectories did not play a decisive role in reducing their risk of becoming ESLeavers by compensating for the effects of systemic inadequacies in unfamiliar contexts, increasing the fragility of the non-leavers’ trajectories among the case-study youngsters. Finally, the implications and impacts of ESL for social integration will be discussed.

Bio: Professor of Social Anthropology and founder of the Research Centre for Migration Studies and EMIGRA research group at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. She has worked extensively in the field of educational inequalities and education policies, especially focusing on school experiences and trajectories of the children of immigrants and minorities in Europe and the USA. After completing a 5 year EU project on ESL, she is currently involved in the TRANS-EMIGRA project doing fieldwork with young girls in Muslim families and the ORALPHA project that focuses on the teaching of oral languages to recently arrived migrants and refugees. She is a member of ACT NOW, DESC research network, devoted to the education rights of migrant and refugee children and youth in/from the MENAT Region. https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0474-400X

Recommended readings:

• Carrasco, S., Narciso, L. and Bertran-Tarres, M.  (2018) Neglected aspirations: Academic trajectories and the risk of early school leaving amongst immigrant and Roma youth in Spain. In: Van Praag et al (eds.) (2018) Comparative Perspective on Early School Leaving in the European Union, Routledge, New York, Chapter 11.
• Reyes, C. and Carrasco, S. (2018) Unintended effects of language policy in the transition of immigrant students to upper secondary education in Catalonia, European Education Research Journal, Special Issue on Transitions.

For the upcoming GRITIM-UPF seminars, please visit this link.