Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Children of immigrants – Germany – Attitudes'

In Australia there has been little research into the experiences and perceptions of education of parents from different minority groups whose young children attend school in this country. This study investigated the experiences that overseas born parents from non-English speaking backgrounds have of their own and their children's education in countries outside Australia, experiences of their children's early education in Australia, as well as those of their young children between 6 and 9 years of age attending school in this country. Despite marked differences in educational policies and practices operating in the participants' countries of origin, almost all parents in this study had experiences of education in childhood which were unlikely to be conducive to the building of warm and friendly future relationships with teachers and schools. Feelings of fear and hostility due to the extremely formal role methods, repressive discipline, and harsh corporal punishment administered by authoritarian and often cruel teachers, particularly in early primary years, were consistently described as pervasive elements in the education of most of the parents participating. In contrast, many aspects• of education in Australia were regarded as superior, however unsatisfactory communication, lack of awareness and interest demonstrated by schools and teachers meant that many of these parents also had negative experiences of education in this country. Dissatisfaction with their children's progress resulting in feelings of powerlessness due to the perceived lack of information, concerns about insufficient academic rigour, motivation and discipline were a source' of anxiety for many participants. Discussions with the young children of participants revealed their preferences for non academic activities outside the classroom, and those involving creativity •and/or• motor skills. Children's dislikes related mainly to relationships with their peer group, with difficulties in making /retaining friendships, bullying and racism as issues of concern. Relationships with teachers seemed to be both positive and negative, however little help with problems concerning the peer group seemed forthcoming, and minimal evidence of positive affirmation of the cultural and linguistic differences of these children was noted. Recommendations and implications include the need for teachers and schools to develop more cultural awareness in order to understand the differing perspectives of linguistically and culturally diverse families, and appreciate the role that parents’ prior experiences of education play in the formation of attitudes towards their children’s education. The importance of improving relationships, building authentic collaborative partnerships between teachers and minority group parents, and providing more information about school goals and programmes with opportunities to discuss these freely, is stressed. The use of overseas born parents’ expertise and home experiences both as resources to facilitate optimum outcomes for their children, and a means of increasing respect, understanding and trust between linguistically and culturally diverse families and the “mainstream” school population, is also strongly recommended.

This paper proposes a method to study the relationship between voters' attitudes towards immigration and the educational attainment of immigrants and their children, and applies it to Austrian data. We measure attitudes towards immigration using data on political parties' positions regarding immigration and the share of votes that each party received at the regional level. We then study the educational attainment and intergenerational educational mobility of immigrants who grew up in the regions whose political environment we observe. Preliminary results for Austria suggest that, surprisingly, better attitudes towards migration are associated with lower educational attainment for immigrants. However, immigrants are more likely than their native peers to obtain more education than their parents. Here, the returns to more positive attitudes towards immigration play a large role in explaining the mobility gap across migration background.
Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Series

In light of the fact that the number of Hispanic children enrolled in American schools is dramatically increasing and that these children are at higher risk of academic difficulty than any other group, the present study investigates the educational and child-rearing beliefs held by Hispanic parents. Understanding these beliefs is pivotal in any attempt to improve Latinos' educational attainment since current research recognizes that parental educational beliefs influence home-literacy practices, which in turn influence subsequent academic achievement. The research questions focus on two types of potential differences in terms of educational and child-rearing beliefs: (1)intercultural (Anglo-Americans vs. Hispanics), (2) intracultural (Hispanics with varying educational levels). To address these questions, 199 participants (114 Hispanics and 85 Anglo-Americans) filled out two surveys, The Parental Modernity Scale and The Rank Order of Parental Values, about educational and child-rearing beliefs. The two instruments used yielded a total of five scores for each participant. One-way ANOVAs followed by Tukey post-hoc tests revealed the existence of statistically significant intercultural differences (p < .0001) while no significant intracultural differences were observed. Overall, Hispanic participants had a propensity to endorse the following beliefs while Anglo-Americans tended to disagree with the same beliefs: (1) the home and the school are two separate entities and parents should not question the teacher's teaching methods, (2) children should be treated the same regardless of differences among them, (3) children are naturally bad and must therefore be trained early in life, (4) the most important thing to teach children is absolute obedience to adults, and (5) learning is a passive process where teachers fill children's heads with information. However, both groups shared the following beliefs: (1) what parents teach their children at home is important to their school success, (2) children learn best by doing rather than listening, (3) children have a right to their own point of view and should be allowed to express it. Possible explanations behind the apparent paradox of having Hispanic parents agree with opposite beliefs are presented. Implications for the results of this study and suggestions for future research are discussed.

This study examined the perceptions of secondary school students who had recently arrived into Hong Kong from China (New Arrivals). Specifically students’ satisfaction in the following five domains was assessed: self, school, family, living environment and friendship. Scores on these five domains were combined to index global life satisfaction. A total of 113 New Arrivals and 178 local students from 4 purposefully selected secondary schools in Hong Kong completed questionnaires. Local students had significantly higher satisfaction than New Arrivals in the following domains: self, school, and living environment. Length of residence in Hong Kong was significantly and negatively related to global life satisfaction. Further, perceived academic achievement was positively and significantly correlated with global life satisfaction. Implications of the findings are discussed.
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Master of Education

Through increasing immigration, the U.S. society is becoming more linguistically and culturally diverse. Yet, as many U.S. language minority groups seek to assimilate, they face many challenges. One challenge is that their home language does not match the dominant language, English, that their children are learning at school. For Korean communities, maintaining Korean language presents a problem for families, especially for the mothers and children. The purpose of this study was to explore the U.S. Korean immigrant mothers' and children's perceptions of and experience with maintaining the Korean language and the effect that has on the development of social capital and cultural identity. I conducted two focus groups--one with mothers, another with their children, using a semi-structured interview protocol. I used narrative inquiry as my qualitative approach and then used thematic analysis to summarize my findings. I identified four major themes: (a) use of Korean language: positive and negative experiences, (b) perspectives on Korean language maintenance: benefits and limitations, (c) effect of parental involvement: provision of social capital, and (d) value of cultural identity formation: acculturation and the reality of learning Korean. This study revealed that parental support for children's heritage language retention seems to have an effect on language maintenance. Thus, because of this seemingly strong relationship, there seem to be significant benefits for children, families, and the overall society when the U.S. educators and other Korean immigrant parents strongly encourage American-born Korean youth to maintain their mother tongue in the U.S.

Background and Objectives Obesity and some dietary related diseases are emerging health problems among Chinese immigrants and their children in developed countries. These health problems are closely linked to eating habits, which are established in the early years of life. Young children’s eating habits are likely to persist into later childhood and youth. Family environment and parental feeding practices have a strong effect on young children’s eating habits. Little information is available on the early feeding practices of Chinese mothers in Australia. The aim of this study was to understand the dietary beliefs, feeding attitudes and practices of Chinese mothers with young children who were recent immigrants to Australia. Methods Using a sequential explanatory design, this mixed methods study consisted of two distinct phases. Phase 1 (quantitative): 254 Chinese immigrant mothers of children aged 12 to 59 months completed a cross-sectional survey. The psychometric properties and factor structure of a Chinese version of the Child Feeding Questionnaire (CFQ, by Birch et al. 2001) were assessed and used to measure specific maternal feeding attitudes and controlling feeding practices. Other questions were developed from the literature and used to explore maternal traditional dietary beliefs and feeding practices related to their beliefs, perceptions of picky eating in children and a range of socioeconomic and acculturation factors. Phase 2 (qualitative): 21 mothers took part in a follow-up telephone interview to assist in explaining and interpreting some significant findings obtained in the first phase. Results Chinese mothers held strong traditional dietary beliefs and fed their children according to these beliefs. However, children’s consumption of non-core foods was high. Both traditional Chinese and Australian style foods were consumed by their children. Confirmatory factor analysis revealed that the original 7-factor model of the CFQ provided an acceptable fit to the data with minor modification. However, an alternative model with eight constructs in which two items related to using food rewards were separated from the original restriction construct, not only provided an acceptable fit to the data, but also improved the conceptual clarity of the constructs. The latter model included 24 items loading onto the following eight constructs: restriction, pressure to eat, monitoring, use of food rewards, perceived responsibility, perception of own weight, perception of child’s weight, and concern about child becoming overweight. The internal consistency of the constructs was acceptable or desirable (Cronbach’s α = .60 - .93). Mothers reported low levels of concern about their child overeating or becoming overweight, but high levels of controlling feeding practices: restriction, monitoring, pressure to eat and use of food rewards. More than one quarter of mothers misinterpreted their child’s weight status (based on mothers’ self-reported data). In addition, mothers’ controlling feeding practices independently predicted half of the variance and explained 16% of the variance in child weight status: pressuring the child to eat was negatively associated with child weight status (β = -0.30, p < .01) and using food rewards was positively associated with child weight status (β = 0.20, p < .05) after adjusting for maternal and child covariates. Monitoring and restriction were not associated with child weight status. Mothers’ perceptions of their child’s weight were positively associated with child weight status (β = 0.33, p < .01). Moreover, mothers reported that they mostly decided what (65%) and how much (80%) food their child ate. Mothers who decided what food their child ate were more likely to monitor (β = -0.17, p < .05) and restrict (β = -0.17, p < .05) their child’s food consumption. Mothers who let their child decide how much food their child ate were less likely to pressure their child to eat (β = -0.38, p < .01) and use food rewards (β = -0.24, p < .01). Mothers’ perceptions of picky eating behaviour were positively associated with their use of pressure (β = 0.21, p < .01) and negatively associated with monitoring (β = -0.16, p < .05) and perceptions of their child’s weight status (β = -0.13, p < .05). Qualitative data showed that pressuring to eat, monitoring and restriction of the child’s food consumption were common practices among these mothers. However, mothers stated that their motivation for monitoring and restricting was to ensure the child’s general health. Mothers’ understandings of picky eating behaviour in their children were consistent with the literature and they reported multiple feeding strategies to deal with it. Conclusion Chinese immigrant mothers demonstrated strong traditional dietary beliefs, a low level of concern for child weight, misperceptions of child weight status, and a high overall level of control in child feeding in this study. The Chinese version of the CFQ, which consists of eight constructs and distinguishes between the constructs using food rewards and restriction, is an appropriate instrument to assess feeding attitudes and controlling feeding practices among Chinese immigrant mothers of young children in Australia. Mothers’ feeding attitudes and practices were associated with children’s weight status and mothers’ perceptions of picky eating behaviour in children after adjusting for a range of socio-demographic maternal and child characteristics. Monitoring and restriction of children’s food consumption according to food selection may be positive feeding practices, whereas pressuring to eat and using food rewards appeared to be negative feeding practices in this study. In addition, the results suggest that these young children have high exposure to energy-dense, nutrient-poor food. There is a need to develop and implement nutrition interventions to improve maternal feeding practices and the dietary quality among children of Chinese immigrant mothers in Australia.

The issue of undocumented immigration has recently taken center-stage in the media and national politics in the United States. A large population of undocumented youth grows up with legal access to public education through high school, following the Supreme Court decision of Plyler vs. Doe, but faces legal and economic barriers to post-secondary education. Following high school, undocumented Hispanic/Latino youth legal protections end, greatly limiting chances for upward mobility through traditional post-secondary education pipelines. In some cases, knowledge of future barriers to post-secondary education leads to a decline in educational motivation. The current political atmosphere makes this study a bit of a moving target as the Obama administration recently passed a reprieve. This reprieve, known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Process (DACA) does not confer any legal status or open any future path to citizenship. It does, however, grant eligible applicants a work permit, and the opportunity to travel, work, and attend school with a sense of security. The purpose of this thesis is to better understand the perceptions and understandings of undocumented Hispanic/Latino youth and their pursuits of higher education in. It is primarily concerned with the educational issues and opportunities facing these students. This research explores the impact of Hispanic/Latino students' perceptions of legal status barriers on their educational attainment experiences. The different opportunities and obstacles present in access to post-secondary education for undocumented Hispanic/Latino students residing in the United States are examined. This study focuses on the time period just after high school graduation, a critical stage in these students' lives, when undocumented status is particularly consequential. Knowledge about students' perception of their educational progress sheds light on their educational attainment experiences; it illuminates important factors associated with their individual educational experiences. Interactions with teachers, school authorities, their parents, siblings, peers, and other authority figures could be described in connecting personal interpretations and emotional responses to specific events in their lives that they feel helped or hindered their educational progress. Knowing how undocumented Hispanic/Latino youth identify and understand the factors that facilitate or impede their navigation of post-secondary education, will further inform educators and researchers alike. This study offers the possibility of identifying additional factors for educators, researchers, and our communities that hinder or facilitate the educational navigation and success of undocumented students. This type of research is significant as this marginalized population lives and works within the American society; the successes and struggles of these students impacts the United States as a whole. Moreover, these students possess amazing potential; we need to better understand and serve this population in order to both improve their life experiences, and to benefit from their input and abilities.

The study examines the recent transformations of integration policies and citizenship laws in Germany with a special focus on the experience of the children of Turkish immigrants in Goslar, a small town. By following

Die sächsische Bergbaustadt Freiberg verzeichnete vor 2 Jahren einen Geburtenrekord. Die Geburtenrate liegt in Freiberg mittlerweile über dem Bundesdurchschnitt und auch über dem sächsischen Durchschnitt. Was sind die Gründe? Die durchgeführte Forschungsarbeit untersucht dieses Phänomen auf Basis einer empirischen Erhebung bei Freiberger Bürgern. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass die Geburten vor allem von Familien mit hohem Bildungsstand und höherem Einkommen stammen. Sie haben einen überdurchschnittlichen Kinderwunsch sowie die Mittel, diesen zu erfüllen. Stark beteiligt sind dabei Zuzügler, die vom Aufschwung der lokalen Unternehmen in Freiberg profitierten. Die Zuzügler sind tendenziell qualifizierte Fachleute mit höherer Bildung, gutem Einkommen und überdurchschnittlichem Kinderwunsch. Die Kausalität für den Zuzug der Menschen nach Freiberg kann nicht vollständig geklärt werden, aber es ist davon auszugehen, dass eine starke Verknüpfung mit der Ansässigkeit erfolgreicher Unternehmen vorliegt. Was die Anforderungen an die Betreuungsleistungen der Kommune anbetrifft, sind die Ergebnisse sehr eindeutig: Eltern legen besonderen Wert auf die Qualität der Betreuung und setzen die Kosten an die letzte Stelle der erfassten Kriterien. Besonders sicher in dieser Einschätzung sind sich dabei Eltern mit höherem Einkommen und hohem Bildungsgrad sowie Großfamilien. Etwas weniger sicher, aber letztlich mit gleichen Präferenzen sind einkommensschwächere Eltern, Eltern mit niedrigem Bildungsgrad und Ansässige
The city of Freiberg, in the German federal state of Saxony, recorded a hike in record levels of its birth rate two years ago. Since then, the local birth rate has surpassed the regional Saxonian and the German average fertility rate. What are the reasons for such a baby boom? This research paper investigates this phenomenon on the basis of empirical evidence drawn from our survey in Freiberg in 2013. The results show that this number of births mostly represent highly-educated families and families with high incomes. They further have an above-average desire to have children and the means to fulfil such dreams. One of the strongest cohorts are non-locals - immigrants to the region of Freiberg. It is also this group which is strongly involved and participates in regional economic development and the local business environment. These newcomers are to a large extent well-educated and well-trained specialists with higher income aspirations and a clearly higher desire to have children. The causality of such immigration to the city of Freiberg cannot be fully clarified, except for a strong dependence on the flourishing business environment. With regard to public policy, and in particular to child care services, the results are very explicit: parents value the quality of child care the most and related costs the least. Respondents with higher incomes and a high education background, and large families, not only ranked these categories as such, but were clear in their choices. Other respondents were less categorical and strict in their opinions, particularly those with lower incomes and a low education background, as well as locals. However, the preferences are ultimately very similar across the entire sampled population

This study examined a mediational model of mental illness stigma, parent-child communication about mental health concerns, and help seeking attitudes/behaviors among young adults with at least one immigrant parent while considering the possible moderating effect of acculturation gap. The primary goal of this study was to examine whether the acculturation gap changed the relation between mental illness stigma and communication about personal mental health concerns with immigrant parents, which in turn could become a significant predictor of their help-seeking attitudes, as well as a barrier to seeking professional mental health services. Findings provided support to the direct and indirect effects of mental illness stigma through communication about mental health concerns on attitudes about help-seeking. The acculturation gap hypothesized to be a possible moderator for the stigma-communication about mental health concerns relationship among young adult ABCI was found to be significant for ABCI with a low mainstream culture acculturation gap. Discussion on the findings, limitations of the study, future research directions, and counseling implications are addressed.

Defence date: 1 December 2006
Examining board: Prof. Bo Strath (Supervisor) ; Prof. Wilfried Spohn ; Prof. Peter Wagner ; Prof. Ayhan Kaya
PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digitised archive of EUI PhD theses completed between 2013 and 2017

Defense date: 11 February 2011 Examining Board: Professor Richard Spady, Johns Hopkins University (External Supervisor) Professor Jérome Adda, European University Institute Professor Christian Belzil, Ecole Polytechnique Professor Pedro Carneiro, University College London
Chapter I: Europe is facing the challenge of integrating a growing number of immigrants and their offspring. On the one hand immigration can be a necessity to overcome problems arising from demographic changes but on the other hand cultural, social and political issues can hamper the economic potential immigrants have for their host society. In this introductory chapter I examine the bigger picture of immigration and integration in Europe and of the research on immigration. I show that there are several closely interlinked dimensions in the integration process and that - in terms of research on immigration - it is more interesting not to regard exclusively one dimension but to study one dimension in its context.
Chapter II: Personality, ability, trust, motivation and beliefs determine outcomes in life and in particular those of economic nature such as finding a job or earnings. A problem with this type of determinants is that they are not immanently objectively quantifiable. They are rather concepts than exactly measurable and directly observable objects. There is no intrinsic scale - such as in the case of age, years of education or wages. Often we think of these concepts as complex and several items are needed to capture them. In the measurement sense, we dispose of a more or less noisy set of measures, which indirectly express and measure a concept of interest. This way of conceptualizing is used in latent variables modelling. I examine in this chapter in how far economic and econometric literature can contribute to specifying a framework of how to use latent variables in economic models. As a semiparametric identification strategy for models with endogeneous latent factors I propose to use existing work on identification in the presence of endogeneous variables and examine which additional assumptions are necessary to apply this strategy for models with latent variables. I discuss several estimation strategies and implement a Bayesian Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm.
Chapter III: Educational attainment, length of stay, differences in national background and language skills play an acknowledged important role for the integration of immigrants. But integration is also a social process, which suggests that psychological factors are relevant. This chapter explores whether and to what extent immigrants and their children need to believe in their ability to control their own success, in other words their sense of control. To quantify this personal trait I use a measure of an individual’s sense of control over outcomes in life - such as finding a job. This measure is known in psychology as "the locus of control". I first estimate an exogenous measure. Then I address the problem that this measure is actually endogeneous in a labor market outcome equation by employing a model in which the sense of control is an endogenized latent factor in a simultaneous equation model. The determinants of this sense of control as well as its effect on the probability of being employed are examined. The model is estimated using an implemented Bayesian Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithm. Results with endogenized personality indicate that, on average, immigrants believe less than natives in being able to control outcomes in life, but children of immigrants have already a stronger sense of control than their parents. The paper also finds that sense of control over life’s outcomes positively contributes to the probability of being employed. This means that immigrants and their children face a double disadvantage on the labor market: they are disadvantaged because of their status as an immigrant and they have a lower sense of being able to control their situation, which is a personality trait that matters on the labour market.
Chapter IV: Identity can be an important driving force for educational performance. Immigrants and their children face the challenge of identifying with their host country’s culture. This paper examines whether young immigrants and their children who identify stronger with the German culture are more likely to increase their educational outcomes. I use a concept of ethnic identity which is designed to capture Germanness in immigrants’ day-to-day routine - based on self-identification, language skills and cultural habits. The research design takes into account the issue of endogeneity of ethnic identity in an educational outcome equation by measuring education and identity at different moments and by using an endogenous latent factor methodology. The paper finds that identification with the German culture has an overall positive effect on educational outcomes and diminishes and renders insignificant the educational gap between immigrants and the second generation. The paper’s results indicate that the second generation identifies stronger with the German culture than immigrants, no matter whether of German, European, Central European or Turkish background. Apart from the immigrant generation, own low educational attainment and high mother’s educational attainment matter for identification with the German culture.

Transnational arranged marriages among Muslim temporary labour migrants’ children have been problematised in policy, media and public discourses in European migrant-receiving societies. Such problematisation has been driven by concerns regarding forced marriages, sham marriages and continuous migration that arguably hinder integration into host societies. As such, transnational arranged marriages have been essentialised as a marker of ‘Monolithic Muslim Otherness’. While Australia is a classic migration-receiving country (Castles, Vasta & Ozkul 2014, p. 128) and Islamophobic sentiment is on the rise (Blair, Dunn, Kamp & Alam 2017), marriage practices among children of Muslim background in Australia are underrepresented in the literature. This thesis aims to address this gap by exploring the perceptions and attitudes of young adult children of Bangladeshi skilled migrants towards transnational arranged marriages. More specifically, it examines the ways in which young adult Bangladeshi-Australians challenge Western discourses of Muslim practices, particularly in regard to gender roles, agency and homogeneity. Employing semi-structured interviews with seven young adult Bangladeshi-Australians, this thesis provides a rich understanding of the complexity, diversity and dynamism of the spousal selection process. Through a postcolonial and post-structuralist analysis of interview data, I illustrate that not only are young adult Muslim Bangladeshi-Australians heterogeneous in terms of their gender, education, age and religiosity, but their perceptions and attitudes towards transnational arranged marriages are similarly diverse. I argue that spousal selection preferences are intertwined with interactions and negotiations between individual preferences, agency and meso-level structures such as family networks, the Bangladeshi migrant community and peer groups, as well as contextual factors, such as the Australian marriage market and immigration and integration policies. This study is an important contribution to the body of research regarding transnational arranged marriages among Muslim migrants, as it moves beyond the marriage behaviour of descendants of temporary labour migrants in Europe. It also makes important contributions to broader research on migration, settlement, national identity and belonging in its driving argument that the questioning of migrant children’s integration based on their marriage behaviour is narrow and exclusionary.