Educational and Occupational Ambitions among the Spanish ‘Second Generation’: The Case of Barcelona

Abstract

Using the first wave of Longitudinal Study of the Second Generation (ILSEG in its Spanish acronym), this study examines the determinants of educational and occupational expectations among the children of immigrants in Barcelona in Catalonia, Spain. With over one-in-four births in Catalonia belonging to foreign-born mothers, the multi-ethnicisation of the youngest segments of the Catalan population has become a demographic reality. We present a series of hypotheses about the key determinants of educational and occupational expectations based on the predictions of segmented assimilation theory, which we test through a series of multivariate regression analyses. By and large, our findings confirm the main propositions of this theory. A particularly interesting finding is that, although previous research suggests that mastery of the Catalan language is crucial for achieving social mobility in Barcelona, our findings show that knowledge of Spanish appears to be a stronger predictor of educational and occupational expectations than knowledge of Catalan. Implications of our findings for the socio-economic adaptation of immigrant youth, particularly in light of the enduring economic recession that Spain is undergoing, are discussed.