Effects of Immigrant Parents' Participation in Society on Their Children's School Performance

Effects of Immigrant Parents' Participation in Society on Their Children's SchoolPerformanceAuthor(s): Geert Driessen, Frederik Smit and Frederick SmitSource: Acta Sociologica, Vol. 50, No. 1 (Mar., 2007), pp. 39-56Published by: Sage Publications, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20459973 .

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ACTA SOCIOLOGICA 2007

Effects of Immigrant Parents' Participation in Society on Their Children's School Performance

Geert Driessen and Frederik Smit ITS - Institutefor Applied Social Sciences, Radboud University Nijmegen,

Nijmegen, The Netherlands

abstract: Integration of ethnic minorities into society is often operationalized as participation in various societal institutions. Examples are cultural, political and labour participation. On the basis of the theoretical concepts of social and cultural capital as proposed by sociologists Bourdieu and Coleman, it is often hypothesized that greater parental participation in society will generally lead to a better educational position for the children of such parents. To test this hypothesis, descriptive and multi-level analyses were conducted using data from the Dutch cohort study Primary Education. The sample included information on nearly 11,000 kindergarten students (6-year-olds) from almost 600 primary schools. In the analyses, ethnic minority parents and their children were compared to native Dutch parents and their children. After controlling for parental socio-economic and ethnic back ground, the results showed an effect of cultural participation only on language and mathematics skills. No effects on non-cognitive outcomes, such as social position, individual well-being or self-confidence, were found.

keywords: education * immigration * integration * multi-level analysis* participation * social and cultural capital * The Netherlands

Introduction

Since World War II, most West European countries have been confronted with an influx of large groups of immigrants. These immigrants differ in a number of respects not just from the receiving society but also from each other. In general, three groups of immigrants can be distin guished: immigrants from former colonies, labour immigrants and refugees/asylum-seekers. Which categories migrate to which countries depends on the historical, political and economic contexts of both the country of departure and the country of receipt. The manner in which the receiving countries react to the arrival of immigrants varies greatly (Koopmans and Statham, 2000; van het Loo et al., 2001), and there are major differences in the manner in which immi grants deal with the expectations and demands of the receiving society (Portes and Rumbaut, 1996; Zhou, 1997).

The manner in which immigrants seek and find their way within a receiving society has been discussed using widely varying terms. Gradual shifts of emphasis can also be detected in these discussions. One of the pioneers within this domain, Gordon (1964), speaks of straight line assimilation or different phases of assimilation occurring in a more or less fixed pattern. The assimilation process is assumed to be complete when the immigrant has been completely absorbed within the receiving society. This vision has been the target of considerable critique.

Acta Sociologica* March 2007 * Vol 50(1): 39-56 * DOI: 10.1177/0001699307074882 Copyright ? 2007 Nordic Sociological Association and SAGE (Los Angeles, London, New Delhi and Singapore)

www.sagepublications.com



Acta Sociologica 50(1)

Berry (2003) used the term 'acculturation' and distinguished four possible strategies - assimi lation, integration, marginalization and separation. The end result is different gradations of immigrant adaptation to the receiving society. With respect to the preceding distinctions, the

West European context differs strongly from the USA context, where an assimilation concept of integration predominates. In Europe, a container concept of integration is typically employed. Relative to the concept of assimilation, this means greater tolerance, pluralism and respect for ethno-cultural differences (Vermeulen and Penninx, 2000). No matter what terms are used, the governments of receiving countries generally see a certain degree of adaptation as a sine quo non for the adequate functioning of both immigrant and society as a whole. A

point of contention, however, is the exact extent to which this adaptation must occur (Lesthaeghe, 2000).

In the present article, the integration of immigrants within The Netherlands stands central. An overview of the different groups of immigrants in The Netherlands and the policies pursued with respect to their integration are presented. As will be seen, a key notion within such policy is that of participation. The assumption that participation expands societal opportunities not only for immigrants but also for their children is therefore tested with the aid of large-scale data. The results are reported in the following, and a more extended discussion of the most important findings concludes the article.

Immigrants and integration policy in The Netherlands The Netherlands is an example of a West European country in which large-scale immigration has been going on for quite a long time now. Depending on the definition used, the number of immigrants in The Netherlands varies from 7 per cent to 19 per cent of the total Dutch popu lation of 16.5 million. Application of the criterion 'country of birth' in 2004 showed the largest immigrant groups to have the following origins: Antillean (131,000), Surinamese (325,000), Turkish (352,000) and Moroccan (306,000) (MinJus, 2004). The first two of these groups comprise immigrants from former colonies who, as a result of their colonial ties, are often already familiar with the Dutch language and culture. The latter two groups consist mostly of labour immigrants arriving in The Netherlands in the 1960s and subsequent waves of immigration for purposes of family reunification and family formation. One characteristic shared by these immigrants is their low level of education. Furthermore, their language and culture are very different from the Dutch language and culture. A distinction that has received increasing emphasis since the '9/11' disaster is that of religion: almost all Turkish and Moroccan immi grants to The Netherlands are Muslims. The remainder of the immigrants in The Netherlands, labour immigrants and refugees/asylum-seekers, comprise a heterogeneous group with respect to language, culture and religion.

Immigration is increasingly being viewed as a problem in The Netherlands, and a number of different reasons for this can be cited. To start with, immigrants have become much more visible during the past few decades as a result not only of their increasing numbers but also primarily of their outward characteristics and behaviour. With respect to the latter, for example, considerable media attention has been paid to the fact that immigrants are strongly over represented within the domains of crime in general and particularly crime accompanied by physical violence. Another contributor is the economic recession and growing recognition of the fact that the current welfare state cannot be sustained. Partly because they are frequently lower educated, do not have sufficient mastery of the Dutch language and are most certainly discriminated against at times, immigrants make relatively greater use of such social services as unemployment, disability and welfare (Hagendoorn et al., 2003). The '9/11' incident has undoubtedly been a catalyst for the increased negative view on immigration and has shifted attention from ethnicity as the main reason for this view to religion. A dramatic turnabout can

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Driessen and Smit: Effects of Immigrant Parents'Participation in Society

be seen to have occurred as a result of the terrorist attacks in the USA and Madrid and the murder of the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh. While it was absolutely taboo to say anything negative about immigrants in The Netherlands prior to '9/11', the populistic right-wing Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn articulated the feelings of dissatisfaction shared by so many people in The Netherlands after the '9/11' attacks and particularly the native Dutch population living in depressed urban areas and thus confronted with the consequences of immigration on a daily basis. As a result of Fortuyn's political efforts, in fact, the incumbent (leftist) political estab lishment in The Netherlands has been more or less done away with. Despite a long tradition of receiving immigrants, only at the beginning of the 1980s was the

concept of 'integration' used in the formulation of policy with respect to ethnic minorities in The Netherlands. The relevant policy had long been aimed at 'integration with maintenance of own culture', but a recent shift has occurred towards policy with more assimilatory charac teristics. Whereas immigrants were previously accepted into the Dutch welfare state with little or no discussion, an undeniable problematization of immigration and hardening of policy has occurred over the past few years under the motto 'compulsory integration, with an accent on one's own responsibility'. The objective of current integration policy is shared citizenship for immigrants and native inhabitants. Citizenship presupposes mastery of the Dutch language and adherence to basic Dutch norms, with the latter including efforts to provide for oneself, law abidance, recognition of the right of each individual to say what he or she thinks, respect for the sexual preferences of others, and equality for men and women. Citizenship thus means a willingness actively to contribute to society and participate in all facets of society (Tweede Kamer, 2003).

Conceptualized in this manner, integration is operationalized as the individual obligation to actively participate in a variety of societal domains, e.g. political-judicial, social-economic, ethnic-cultural and religious (WRR, 2001). A division frequently used for research purposes is that between structural integration, measured as the level of education attained and position on the job market, and social-cultural integration, measured in terms of social contacts and participation in cultural institutions (Vermeulen and Penninx, 2000; Ode, 2002). For the Dutch government, participation in education and the job market stand central. In addition to these aspects of participation, the importance of social participation (e.g. membership in associations and clubs), political participation (e.g. the right to vote and have a say), cultural participation (e.g. artistic and cultural expression), societal participation (e.g. volunteer work) and athletic participation as different means to achieving citizenship is also often mentioned (Tweede Kamer, 2003).1

Participation, capital and educational opportunity Integration pertains not just to the immigrants themselves, but also to their children. The better integrated immigrant parents are into Dutch society, the more favourable their chances of inte gration and educational and societal opportunities for their children, and for this reason current integration policy emphasizes the responsibility of immigrant parents to support and promote the school careers of their children (Tweede Kamer, 2003).

Viewed from such a perspective, participation can be construed as a form of 'capital' (Gordon, 1964). The expectations with respect to the consequences of parental participation for the educational opportunities of their children can then be derived from the theoretical notions of social and cultural capital as formulated by, among others, Bourdieu, Coleman, Putnam and Sowell. These notions were originally formulated in conjunction with social economic status (SES), but they also contain a clearly ethnic component (Driessen, 2001). This means that both parents from lower social-economic milieus and immigrant parents who also participate in various sectors of society provide relatively greater social and cultural capital

41




for their families and, in this manner, positively influence the child-rearing situation, educational opportunities and societal opportunities of their children. Immigrant status generally coincides with low SES. On the basis of this information, it can be assumed that the social-cultural capital of participation is particularly important for immigrants in improving their societal opportunities. A few concrete examples may elucidate the assumptions underlying the above notions.

Parents who regularly visit cultural manifestations such as museums and concerts (i.e. thereby displaying cultural participation) are able to tell their children about their visit and thus expand the child's knowledge and interests. Given that cultural participation is valued by many schools, the interest prompted by the experiences of the parents can favourably influence the school careers of children. This is of particular importance for immigrant children because their cultures are often further from the mainstream (i.e. white middle class) culture than the cultures of children from native Dutch lower social-economic environments. Immigrant parents who have a job (i.e. display labour participation) come into greater contact with native Dutch individuals than immigrant parents who do not have a job and are thus limited to their own ethnic (language) circle of contacts. Given the need to communicate using the Dutch language at work, moreover, the Dutch language skills of such immigrants will improve and be reflected in their Dutch-language communication with their children at home. Parents who participate in all kinds of organizations that are not specifically intended for immigrants (i.e. display societal participation) build a network of relations, thereby ensuring access to all kinds of information and gatekeepers, and can thus create more favourable conditions for the educational opportunities of their children. From the preceding, it can also be deduced that greater participation not only influences the child-rearing situation within the family via the introduction of all kinds of cultural-societal experiences (i.e. cultural capital), but also outside the family via the building of a social network including the family, school and broader social connections (i.e. social capital).

Empirical research on the connections between social-ethnic background milieu and partici pation is available for The Netherlands to varying degrees. In most cases, only one aspect or a small number of the different aspects of participation constitute the topic of analysis. Studies of the relations between background milieu and labour participation show undeniably low labour participation for immigrants and the low educated (Dagevos et al., 2003). Cultural participation similarly occurs much less frequently among immigrants and the low educated (Driessen, 2001). In contrast, religious participation appears to occur more frequently among immigrants than among the native population, which is often proposed to be connected with the secularization of the native population and the marginal influence of modernization upon immigrants (Becker and de Wit, 2000). Participation in club life and volunteer work is clearly less frequent for immigrants than for the native population (de Hart, 2002). The same holds for political participation (Fennema et al., 2000). It should be added that certain more specific differences can be found to occur and relate to age, generation, length of immigrant residence and specific immigrant group.

Research on the relations between social-ethnic milieu, participation of parents and the educational positions of children is limited. One relevant finding is that of Tesser and Mulder (1990), who found cultural participation - operationalized as museum and concert attendance - to have virtually no effect on educational achievement. Driessen (1993), too, came to the conclusion that cultural participation does not contribute anything beyond what background milieu contributes to the explanation of achievement differences. Dijkstra and Veenstra (2000), however, reveal effects stemming from religious background defined in terms of church membership and church attendance. Research on labour participation, operationalized in terms of being in paid work or not, is virtually unavailable. Within the research by Oomens et al. (2003), however, no independent effects of labour participation were found. To our

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Driessen and Smit: Effects of Immigrant Parents' Participation in Society

knowledge, there is no research on the effects of social, societal or political participation on educational results.

In sum, there is very little research in which immigrant background, participation and educational results are analysed in conjunction with each other. With the availability of recent large-scale national figures, however, we hope to fill this gap and attempt to answer the following questions:

* What relations exist between aspects of parental participation and social-ethnic background? * What relations exist between parental participation and the cognitive and non-cognitive

educational outcomes of their children? * To what extent can differences in the cognitive and non-cognitive educational outcomes of

children be explained by differences in the participation of their parents after social-ethnic background has been taken into consideration?

On the basis of the theoretical notions pertaining to the role of 'capital', we generally expect parents from lower social-economic milieus to participate less than parents from higher social-economic milieus and immigrant parents to participate even less than the parents from lower social-economic milieus. We further expect a stronger degree of parental participation to be associated with a more favourable educational position for their children. Finally, partici pation is expected to continue to have an effect on the educational position after social-ethnic background has been taken into consideration. In answering these questions, we hope to determine the extent of the empirical support for the position held by the current Dutch government with respect to 'participation as capital'.

Data and variables Sample and instruments The present data stem from the cohort study Primary Education ('PRIMA'). Within the PRIMA study, students have been followed since the 1994/95 school year via the administration of various tests and questionnaires once every two years to the students and their parents, teachers and school directorates. A total of about 60,000 students from kindergarten, grade 2, grade 4 and grade 6 from some 600 primary schools, or 9 per cent of all Dutch primary schools, have been involved. For the present article, use is made of the figures from the third PRIMA measurement point during the school year 1998/99 (Driessen et al., 2000, 2003).

The PRIMA sample is characterized by an overrepresentation of schools with students from disadvantaged social-ethnic circumstances. This was done intentionally in order to enable conclusions with regard to the functioning of children from different categories of low educated immigrants. The analyses were aimed at the children in kindergarten, who were about 6 years of age, and their parents. The expectation was that the role of the school would still be fairly limited for such young children, while the influence of the home milieu (i.e. parental participation) would be greater. The effects of participation can be better isolated in this way. The sample thus contains data from 583 schools and a total of 10,680 students. The information for the analyses came from four sources: language and mathematics tests

indicating the cognitive skills of the students; a teacher evaluation list determining the non cognitive positions of students; information provided by the schools with regard to the parents; and a parent questionnaire providing information on the social-ethnic background and participation of the parents (nearly 80 per cent of these questionnaires were filled in by the mother, 20 per cent by the father).

Despite the fact that the parent questionnaire was circulated with an accompanying Turkish and Arabic explanation, a number of parents did not return it; the response rate was 73 per cent. Analyses have shown that a relatively greater number of immigrant parents than native

43




Dutch parents failed to return the questionnaire. Given that the PRIMA study contains an overrepresentation of immigrant groups, the final sample tends towards representativity (Driessen and Doesborgh, 2003). By definition, this representativity refers to the population of parents with children in kindergarten, and not to the Dutch population in general. It can also be noted that the aim of the present study was not so much to generate representative state ments as to explore associations.

Virtually all of the information on social-ethnic background and those aspects of partici pation included in the analyses were available for both the mothers and the fathers. In order to characterize the level of the family, however, the data from the father were initially used;

when such information was unavailable, as in a single-parent family, the data from the mother were used.

Variables Three variables were distinguished: family structural characteristics, aspects of parental partici pation and cognitive and non-cognitive outcome measures.2 In Figure 1, just how we believe the different variables relate to each other is outlined schematically. The operationalizations of the variables are presented below.

Family structural characteristics

* Parental education: (1) primary education; (2) vocational education; (3) professional education; (4) college education.

* Parental ethnicity: Based on the country of birth: (1) Dutch; (2) Surinamese or Antillean (former colonies); (3) Turkish or Moroccan (labour immigrants); (4) other (e.g. Asia; Africa; South, West and East Europe).

* Parental length of residence: (1) less than 10 years; (2) 10-19 years; (3) 20 years or more; (4) from birth.

Participation

* Labour participation. Parents were asked whether they were in paid work: (1) yes or (0) no. For the descriptive analyses, this variable was transformed into 'the percentage of parents in paid work'.

* Religious participation. Parents were asked how often they attended a religious meeting (church or mosque): (1) (virtually) never; (2) a few times a year; (3) one to three times a

month; (4) weekly or more often. * Political participation. Whether the parents voted during the city council elections and whether

they voted during the parliamentary elections were the questions asked: (0) no times; (1) one time; (2) two times.

Aspects of participation Cognitive outcome measures

Family structural Aspects of participation anguage skill . parental ethnicity * religious . math skill . parental education . political . parental length of . societal Non-cognitive outcome measures

residence . social * social position . cultural . self-confidence

. well-being

Figure 1 Assumed relations between family structural characteristics, aspects of participation, and outcome measures

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* Societal participation. Parents were asked if they ever volunteered for an organization or a club (e.g. in their neighbourhood, environment): (1) yes or (0) no. For the descriptive analyses, this variable was transformed into 'the percentage of parents doing volunteer work'.

* Social participation. Parents were asked if they were involved in any associations or clubs (e.g. youth club, scouting club): (1) none; (2) one; (3) two or more.

* Cultural participation. Whether the parents ever went to: a concert, film or museum: (1) never, (2) less than once a year, (3) once a year; (4) twice or more a year.

Cognitive outcome measures Language skills and mathematics skills, measured using two standardized tests, were developed by the National Institute for Educational Measurement and provide an indication of level of preparatory language and of mathematics. The tests consisted of 60 and 42 items, respectively; reliability (K-R 20) 0.96 and 0.90.

Non-cognitive outcome measures The three characteristics social position, self-confidence and individual well-being were measured using the teacher evaluation list. Social position consists of four items; reliability (alpha) 0.84. Sample item: 'This student is popular among classmates.' Self-confidence consists of four items; reliability 0.75. Sample item: 'This student is afraid and anxious.' Individual well-being consists of three items; reliability 0.79. Sample item: 'This student feels comfortable with me.' Separate scale scores were created by averaging the various item scores. A low scale score for social position thus indicated a weak social position, a high scale score a strong social position, and so forth.

Results Descriptive analyses In order to gain initial insight into the distributions of the different variables, we first present an overview of the relations between parental ethnicity and parental education. Thereafter, we present the relations of the family structural characteristics of parental ethnicity and parental education to parental length of residence, the different aspects of participation and the different cognitive and non-cognitive outcome measures.

The relations between the predictor variables of parental ethnicity and parental education are presented in Table 1 in the form of percentages.

As can be seen, at most 3 per cent of the Dutch parents had no more than a primary education, while the corresponding figure for the Turkish and Moroccan parents was 47 per cent. For the category 'other immigrant', a fairly varied pattern of education was found with a relatively large percentage of lower educated parents (13 per cent) but also a relatively high percentage

Table 1 Relations between parental ethnicity and parental education (in %)

Ethnicity

Education Dutch Sur/Ant Tur/Mor Other Total

Primary 3 10 47 17 11 Vocational 24 27 18 13 23 Professional 47 54 29 40 44 College 26 9 5 30 22

n = 100% 7797 431 1651 801 10,680

Note: Sur = Surinamese; Ant = Antillean; Tur = Turkish; Mor = Moroccan; Other = other immigrant.

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of higher educated parents and even more parents with a professional education (30 per cent) than found for the Dutch group of parents. These findings clearly reflect the heterogeneous composition of this category of parents.

Table 2 gives an overview of parental ethnicity and parental education in relation to parental length of residence, the six aspects of participation and the cognitive and non-cognitive outcome measures. This is done with average percentages or scores and the nominal-metric correlation coefficient eta per category of variable to be predicted. To interpret these coefficients, the criteria of Cohen (1988) were taken as a guideline: eta = 0.10 'weak', eta = 0.30 'medium' and eta = 0.50 'strong'. When parental ethnicity and parental length of residence are compared, the results in Table

2 show almost 50 per cent of the Surinamese and Antillean parents residing in The Nether lands for 20 or more years. For the Turkish and Moroccan group of parents, this is more than 33 per cent, and for the category of other immigrant parents it is more than 25 per cent.

Parental ethnicity in relation to the different aspects of participation show large differences in respect of labour participation. Almost 90 per cent of Dutch parents are in paid work while only about 50 per cent of immigrant parents report being in paid work. Differences between Dutch and Surinamese and Antillean parents can probably be attributed to differences in educational level, but also to discrimination on the job market. In addition, Surinamese and Antillean families are relatively often mother-only families, the mothers often having difficulty combining looking after their children with a job. With regard to active religious participation, it is striking that the Dutch parents score extremely low, while Turkish and Moroccan parents score extremely high. Almost 60 per cent of the Dutch parents studied here never attend a religious meeting, while almost 50 per cent of the Turkish and Moroccan parents visit a mosque weekly or more frequently. This finding is not really surprising in light of the process of secularization set in motion in The Netherlands in the 1960s and the fact that most Turks and Moroccans are Muslim and still strong believers - although generation differences can be found. With regard to active political participation, there is a large difference between the Dutch parents, who regularly vote in both local and parliamentary elections, and the three categories of immigrant parents, who frequently do not vote at all. This latter finding is not entirely surprising as the voting rights for non-Dutch individuals differ from those of Dutch individuals. A similar contrast between the Dutch parents and immigrant categories of parents also occurs for societal participation measured in terms of volunteer work. The Dutch parents perform more than twice the amount of volunteer work performed by immigrant parents. With regard to social participation in the form of club membership, the differences between the different ethnic groups are minimal. The Turkish and Moroccan parents reported being members of a club almost as frequently as the Dutch parents. With regard to cultural participation, the observed differences are primarily caused by the fact that the Dutch parents attend such events relatively often, while the Turkish and Moroccan parents, in particular, never do so.

For correlations between parental ethnicity and outcome measures, significant differences can be found primarily for language and mathematics, with the Dutch children scoring high and the Turkish and Moroccan children scoring low. Only marginal differences were detected for the non-cognitive outcome measures.

The relations between parental education and parental length of residence show that the differences largely depend on the category of primary education. From Table 1, we can see that a relatively large number of immigrant parents (i.e. parents with a relatively shorter length of residence in The Netherlands) tend to fall within the category of individuals with only primary education.

The relations between parental education and different aspects of participation show a clear relation to being in paid work: To the extent that parents are higher educated, they also tend

46




Table 2 Relations of parental ethnicity and parental education to parental length of residence, participation, and outcome measures (average scores)

Family structural characteristics

Ethnicity Education

Dutch Sur/Ant Tur/Mor Other eta Prim Voc Prof Col eta Total

Length of residence % <10 years 0 21 19 48 0.52 18 4 6 8 0.14 8 % 10-19 years 0 32 47 26 0.58 36 8 9 4 0.30 11 % 220 years 2 48 34 26 0.48 27 11 8 6 0.20 10 % from birth 98 0 0 0 0.96 20 77 77 81 0.41 71

Participation Labour

% paid work 87 54 49 52 0.38 41 75 81 89 0.32 77 Religious

% (practically) 58 36 15 45 0.31 28 57 50 50 0.16 49 never

% few times 24 44 17 25 0.11 18 22 26 25 0.06 24 a year

% 1-3 times 9 13 20 13 0.12 17 9 11 13 0.07 11 a month

% >1 times a week 9 7 48 16 0.39 37 12 13 12 0.21 15

Political % no times 21 45 43 58 0.28 49 39 25 12 0.26 28 % one time 12 17 26 17 0.14 26 17 14 10 0.12 15 % two times 67 38 30 25 0.33 25 44 61 78 0.32 57

Societal % volunteer 28 12 12 14 0.16 7 17 25 36 0.20 24

work Social

% 0 48 63 48 65 0.10 59 57 48 43 0.12 50 % 1 47 32 42 30 0.11 37 39 47 49 0.09 44 % >2 5 5 9 5 0.06 4 4 6 8 0.06 6

Cultural % never 14 15 73 24 0.49 67 30 18 7 0.41 24 % <1 ayear 42 60 18 47 0.20 27 50 46 23 0.22 40 % 1 a year 30 16 8 21 0.19 4 16 26 44 0.28 25 % >2 a year 13 9 1 9 0.14 1 4 9 26 0.28 11

Effect measures Language 987 967 952 969 0.36 955 975 982 991 0.28 979 Math 57 50 47 52 0.28 47 53 55 59 0.26 55 Social position 3.8 3.7 3.7 3.7 0.12 3.7 3.8 3.8 3.9 0.11 3.8 Self-confidence 3.6 3.6 3.6 3.6 0.02 3.5 3.5 3.6 3.6 0.06 3.6 Well-being 4.1 4.0 4.0 4.0 0.05 4.0 4.0 4.1 4.1 0.06 4.1

Note: Sur = Surinamese; Ant = Antillean; Tur = Turkish; Mor = Moroccan; Other = other immigrant; Prim = primary;

Voc = vocational; Prof = professional; Col = college.

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more often to be in paid work. Any differences with respect to religious participation can be traced back to the category of primary education, with the lower educated in The Netherlands being predominantly immigrants and thereby still fairly religious. With regard to political participation, it is clear that the higher the level of parental education, the more frequently the parents vote. With respect to societal participation, a clearly positive relation can be seen to exist with parental level of education. This does not hold, however, for social participation, where only minimal differences are found with respect to the generally limited participation in clubs. Finally, there is a strong relation with cultural participation: The higher the parental level of education, the stronger the degree of cultural participation.

Just as for parental ethnicity, parental education also related positively to the language and mathematics skills of the children. The relations are not as strong as for parental ethnicity, however. And while parental education reflects no differences between language and mathe matics, the etas for parental ethnicity show a considerably stronger relation for language than for mathematics. Just as for parental ethnicity, moreover, there are no appreciable relations to the non-cognitive outcome measures.

Multi-level analyses Up until now, relations between aspects of parental participation and outcome measures have been analysed bivariately. In the present research, two levels can actually be distinguished, namely, student level and school level. In order to do justice to this distinction, the presence of independent participation effects on the outcome variables is examined with the aid of multi-level analyses (Snijders and Bosker, 1999). Two models (A and B) are tested which differ in the inclusion of the predictor 'parental length of residence' and - in relation to that predictor - the ethnic groups studied.3

In model A, parental ethnicity, parental education, participation and their interactions are entered in a number of steps. All four categories of parental ethnicity are used in these analyses. In model B, parental length of residence is entered in the last step of the analyses and only the three immigrant categories of parental ethnicity are used.

The multi-level analyses thus involve testing the following models:

* With the aid of model 0, how the variance is distributed across student and school levels is examined.

* In model 1, parental ethnicity and parental education are added to model 0. 'Dutch' ethnicity is the reference group in model A, while 'other' ethnicity is the reference group in model B. In each case, parental education was included in the form of three dichotomies, with college education serving as the reference group.

* In model 2, the six participation variables are added to model 0. In contrast to the descrip tive analyses, the relevant relations are calculated with the other participation variables held constant.

* In model 3, the six participation variables are added to model 1. In this way, whether or not one can speak of an independent contribution of participation to the size of effects after controlling for parental ethnicity and parental education is examined.

* In model 4, the products of parental ethnicity and parental education and participation are added to model 3. In this manner, the contributions of the interactions between parental ethnicity and participation and the interactions between parental education and partici pation with the size of effects can be determined.

* In model 5, in model B, parental length of residence is added to model 3 to determine whether parental length of residence operates independently of parental ethnicity, parental education and participation.

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The unstandardized regression coefficients (B) are reported in the tables. The degree to which the estimates differ significantly from 0 (sig.) is also indicated; significant effects are indicated by an asterisk and stronger effects by a double asterisk (or: z > 3.6 and z > 4.8, respectively; cf. Bosker et al., 2001).

The tables are constructed as follows. In the part of the tables labelled 'variance components', the null model (model 0) indicates the distribution of the total variance in the outcome

measure across the student and school levels. For the models thereafter, the percentages of the student and school variances explained by the predictor variables entered at that point are presented. The explained variances for models 1 and 2 are calculated with respect to model 0 and thus indicate how much parental ethnicity and parental education, on the one hand, and the six participation variables, on the other, help explain the variance in the outcome measure. Then, for model 3, the explanation provided by model 1 is subtracted, so that under this model the additional explanation stands after the introduction of parental ethnicity and parental education. The explained variance for model 4 is calculated with respect to model 3, which indicates the influence of any interactions between parental ethnicity and participation, on the one hand, and parental education and participation, on the other. The explained variance for model 5 is also calculated with respect to model 3, which means that the effects of adding information on parental length of residence in addition to the previously included parental ethnicity, parental education and participation are evaluated. The values after chi2/d.f. are used to test whether one model significantly differs from another; significant effects are indicated

with an asterisk and stronger effects with a double asterisk. In the following, the results of the analyses for the language and mathematics skills of the

students are presented: first for the total sample and then for the immigrant-only sample. It can be seen from Table 3 that more than 80 per cent of the variance in language skill occurs

at the level of the student and 20 per cent at the level of the school for model 0. The results for model 1 show strong effects of parental ethnicity and parental education.

Compared to the reference category of Dutch, Turkish or Moroccan students score more than 25 points lower, while the other two categories of immigrants score more than 15 points lower. (The standard deviation for language skill was 37.) Any effect of parental education has been controlled for via simultaneous entry with parental ethnicity. The effect of parental education when parental ethnicity is similarly controlled for is weaker than the effect of parental ethnicity. Compared to the college educated, the children of parents with no more than a primary education score more than 17 points lower. Parental ethnicity and parental education explain 6.4 per cent of the student-level variance and 54 per cent of the school-level variance.

From the coefficients found for model 2, it can be deduced that virtually all of the aspects of participation with the exception of social participation (i.e. participation in associations and clubs) exert significant effects. As already noted, the contributions of the other five aspects of participation are controlled for in the analyses for one particular aspect. In interpreting these effects, it should be noted that the different aspects of participation involve varying numbers of categories. In this light, the effect of cultural participation can be seen to be strongest: Children of parents who attend two or more cultural events a year score an average of 15.6 points higher than children of parents who never attend such events. The different aspects of participation explain 4.3 per cent of the variance at the level of the student and 36.9 per cent at the level of the school. When the family structural characteristics of parental ethnicity and parental education are

entered simultaneously with the six aspects of participation, the effects of ethnicity and education can be seen to drop slightly but remain strongly significant. For the aspects of participation, however, only labour participation can be seen to remain weakly significant, while political and cultural participation remain strongly significant. Note that these results reflect the influence of participation after parental ethnicity and parental education have been

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Table 3 Results of multilevel analyses with language skill, total sample

Model

0 1 2 3 4

B SE sig. B SE sig. B SE sig. B SE sig.

Regression coefficients Ethnicitya

Sur/Ant -15.7 1.7 ** -13.3 1.8 ** Tur/Mor -25.4 1.1 ** -21.4 1.3 ** Other -15.7 1.3 ** -12.1 1.3 **

Educationb Primary -17.1 1.3 ** -12.1 1.4 ** Vocational -12.8 1.0 ** -9.0 1.0 ** Professional -6.7 0.8 ** -4.5 0.9 **

Participation Labour 6.9 0.8 ** 3.7 0.8 * Religious -3.2 0.3 ** -0.7 0.4 Political 3.6 0.4 ** 2.0 0.4 ** Societal 4.2 0.8 ** 2.3 0.8 Social 0.2 0.6 0.4 0.5 Cultural 5.2 0.4 ** 2.4 0.4 **

Interactions E/E x P

Variance components Student level (%) 80.9 6.4 4.3 +0.9 +0.7 School level (%) 19.1 54.0 36.9 +1.1 +1.3 Chi2/df 164 ** 108 ** 19 * 2 ns

Notes: Sur = Surinamese; Ant = Antillean; Tur = Turkish; Mor = Moroccan; Other = other immigrant.

Interactions E/E x P: interactions of parental ethnicity x aspects of participation and interactions of parental education x aspects of participation. Reference category: a Dutch; b college education. *just significant, **strongly significant, ns = not significant.

controlled for. Compared to model 1, moreover, the amount of additional variance explained by the aspects of participation is minimal: about 1 per cent at the level of the student and 1 per cent at the level of the school.

When the interaction effects of parental ethnicity, on the one hand, and parental education, on the other, with the different aspects of participation were tested in model 4 (i.e. E/E x P), none of the interactions proved significant. This means that the effects of the various aspects of participation did not differ regardless of the categories of parental ethnicity or parental education.

The results with respect to mathematics skills proved to be largely comparable to those with respect to language skills and are not therefore presented in a table. In the end, a minimal effect of cultural participation can be seen to remain after parental ethnicity and parental education have been controlled for. The amount of additional variance explained by the six aspects of participation considered together, however, is only about 1 per cent of the variance at the level of the student and 1.5 per cent at the level of the school. Note that this indicates the joint influence of all six aspects of participation or a virtually non-existent effect. When the sample is limited to immigrant-only students, similar results are found as for the

total sample of students. Examination of Table 4 shows the children of predominantly low

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Table 4 Results of multilevel analyses language skill, immigrant-only sample

Model

0 1 2 3 4 5

B SE sig. B SE sig. B SE sig. B SE sig. B SE sig.

Regression coefficients

Ethnicitya Sur/Ant 0.0 1.9 -1.1 1.9 -2.4 1.9 Tur/Mor -10.7 1.5 ** -8.4 1.6 ** -9.5 1.6 **

Educationb Primary -13.1 2.0 ** -9.4 2.2 ** -10.8 2.2 ** Vocational -8.7 2.2 * -6.2 2.2 -8.1 2.2 * Professional -5.7 1.9 * -4.3 1.9 -5.5 1.9

Participation Labour 3.5 1.2 * 3.1 1.2 2.9 1.2 Religious -2.8 0.5 ** -1.6 0.5 * -1.4 0.5 Political 1.3 0.7 1.6 0.7 0.9 0.7 Societal 0.8 1.8 -0.3 1.8 -0.6 1.8 Social -0.8 1.0 -0.5 1.0 -0.7 1.0 Cultural 5.8 0.7 ** 3.0 0.8 * 3.0 0.8 *

Interactions E/E x P Tur/Mor x labour -12.8 2.9 **

participation Length of 2.1 0.4 **

residence

Variance components Student level (%) 83.2 3.5 2.8 +1.0 +2.3 +1.9 School level (%) 16.8 32.2 29.9 +5.4 +4.4 +0.9 Chi2/df 33 ** 23 ** 7 * 3 * 30 **

Notes: Sur = Surinamese; Ant = Antillean; Tur = Turkish; Mor = Moroccan. Interactions E/E x P: interactions of parental ethnicity x aspects of participation and interactions of parental education X aspects of participation. Reference category: a other immigrant; b college education. *just significant, **strongly significant.

educated and Turkish or Moroccan parents scoring particularly low with regard to language skills. Significant effects are initially found for labour, religious and cultural participation. After controlling for parental ethnicity, parental education and parental length of residence, however, only a weak independent effect of cultural participation can be seen to remain. A

single significant interaction effect is found, namely for Turkish/Moroccan parental ethnicity and labour participation. This means that the effect of labour participation for the category of Turkish and Moroccan parents is different from the reference category of other immigrant parents. Finally, a significant independent but marginal effect of parental length of residence is found: To the extent that immigrant parents have resided longer in The Netherlands, the better the language skills of their children. This effect does not mean much in absolute terms as it only explains an additional 1.9 per cent of the variance at the level of the student and an additional 0.9 per cent of the variance at the level of the school.

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The mathematics skill results for the sample of immigrant-only students strongly resemble the language skill results for the same sample. Different aspects of participation are neverthe less found to play a role in mathematics versus language skills. Whereas cultural participation appears to be the most important aspect of participation for language skills, labour partici pation is found to be important but only weakly significant for mathematics skills.

Conclusions and discussion In this research, the influence of parental participation in various aspects of Dutch society on the educational positions of their children was examined. The analyses included both cognitive and non-cognitive outcome measures. The underlying assumption was that the different aspects of participation distinguished here provide an indication of the degree of integration and that greater parental integration in Dutch society will promote a more favourable educational position.

The results show a reasonably strong association between parental ethnicity and parental level of education. Native Dutch parents are highest educated, and Turkish and Moroccan parents lowest educated. Moderate to strong associations are also discerned for parental ethnicity and parental education, on the one hand, and the different aspects of participation and cognitive outcome measures, on the other. One can speak of two dichotomies in connec tion with these differences: one between Dutch versus immigrant parents and one between higher versus lower educated parents. With respect to the non-cognitive outcome measures, no differences are observed with respect to parental ethnicity or parental education.

The analyses of the relations between the different aspects of participation and the various outcome measures revealed no connections with the non-cognitive measures. Participation of the parents does not appear to correlate with the social position of their children in the school class, their children's well-being or their children's self-confidence. However, clear connec tions were found between parental participation and both the cognitive outcome measures, i.e. the language and mathematics skills of their children. In the relevant analyses for the total sample, strong effects of the different aspects of participation, with the exception of social participation (i.e. participation in associations and clubs), are found initially. When ethnic and educational background are taken into consideration, however, only a strong effect of political and cultural participation (i.e. voting behaviour and attendance at cultural events) on language skill remains. For mathematics skills, only a strong effect of cultural participation and weak effects of labour, political and societal participation (i.e. paid work, voting and volunteer work) remain. In the relevant analyses for the immigrant-only sample, only a weak effect of cultural participation remains for language skills and a weak effect of labour participation for mathe matics skills.

With regard to the different aspects of participation, a rough distinction can be made between the social and cultural sides of integration. This distinction parallels that between social capital and cultural capital. The finding of relations between cultural participation but not social participation may pertain to the age of the students studied here. The students were quite young, which means that the influence of social networks may not yet be very relevant. Cultural capital, in contrast, may already be relevant as the child is part of this, via the parents within the home situation, at a very early age.

The present results show one aspect of participation continually playing a dominant role in the explanation of differences in mathematics and language skills, namely 'high brow' cultural participation. The regular attendance at concerts, cinemas and museums by parents is consist ently found to be associated with the cognitive skills of their children. It should be noted within this context that these findings refer to the independent influence of cultural partici pation after the influences of parental ethnicity, parental education and parental length of

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residence have been taken into account. It should also be emphasized that these effects are found to occur at a very early stage in the educational careers of children - that is, already in the kindergarten years. The above findings appear to confirm the cultural capital thesis of Bourdieu, according to

which social inequality is reproduced generation after generation via culture transmission. According to the present results, moreover, cultural capital is divided along not only milieu but also ethnic lines. Given the interwoven nature of milieu and ethnicity, this means that predominantly low educated Turkish and Moroccan parents rarely or never attend the afore mentioned cultural events. And, according to the Dutch Secretary of Culture (MinOCW, 2000), this has recently been shown indeed to be the case. To promote the cultural participation of particularly these groups of immigrants in the form of not only theatre, concert and museum attendance but also in the form of library use, an action plan has been formulated to expand the accessibility of such institutions. At the same time, more sustainable relations between schools and cultural institutions are being sought in order to foster attention to culture within the curriculum. The hope is that these activities in the long run will help reduce the educational delays found for, among others, the aforementioned groups.

In conclusion, we return to the expectation voiced by the Dutch government with regard to integration, namely that participation in various domains of society can be expected to influence the societal opportunities of immigrants and their children favourably. To start with, our analyses revealed major differences in the extent of participation across different groups of immigrants. In policy papers, however, the government adheres to 'the principle of propor tionality' without a clear indication of how this principle should be operationalized. This is troublesome when it comes to the implementation and evaluation of policy and also compli cates interpretation of the present findings. It is already known that integration proceeds in phases and that the degree of integration can differ per domain. In this connection, one often speaks of partial integration, delayed acculturation, differentiated integration, segmented assimilation, bumpy-line assimilation, heteropraxis or hybridization. At the same time, it is clear that a strong orientation towards one's own group need not stand in the way of social mobility and a favourable societal position (Vermeulen and Penninx, 2000; Zhou, 1997). In other words, a more detailed and differentiated government vision of integration and partici pation is called for. The present findings show the assumption with regard to the chances of immigrant children receiving only partial confirmation. Not only was the number of partici pation effects found to be very small, the percentage of the variance in the language and math ematics skills explained by participation was minimal. This means that expectations have been stretched too far and that greater realism is called for.

In this article we have focused on the Dutch situation. Our analyses showed that in The Netherlands the effect of minority parents' societal participation on their children's school performance is limited. The question is whether this finding can be generalized to other European countries.

In the introduction we pointed to the fact that the way receiving countries react to the arrival of immigrants varies greatly (Entzinger, 2000). Although European Union immigrant policies are in principle communitarian (i.e. policies of the whole community), integration policies are not: national authorities make their sovereign decisions on policies in this domain. This means that the convergence in immigrant policies that has occurred during recent decades is accom panied by a diversity of integration policies. In general, integration policies at a national level have been developed late, or not at all, Sweden and The Netherlands being exceptions. If such policies were formulated, this was often done as a reaction to crisis situations, i.e. ad hoc, reactive and control oriented, and with piecemeal results. Basically, two orientations can be discerned. On the one hand, UK, Dutch and Swedish policies in the 1980s and 1990s have presented themselves as multiculturalist or pluralist. These policies presuppose not only

53




political inclusion and equality in the socio-economic domain, but also aim at cultural and religious equity. On the other hand, French, German and Austrian policies - in so far as they have been formulated at all - have traditionally been associated with assimilationism. This implies that the state and society are considered as given and immigrants are required to adapt to that society, at least to its public institutions (Penninx, 2005). Following events like '9/11', however, a tendency towards convergence is observable in the domain of integration policies as well - though not to the same extent with regard to its various dimensions (e.g. legal political, socio-economic and cultural-religious). The entire Western world now faces a growing influence of right-wing, conservative and nationalist movements; in countries such as Belgium and France, anti-immigrant parties have a particularly large following (Prins and Slijper, 2002). As a consequence, in public debates and parliaments a call for assimilation as opposed to multiculturalism and diversity is increasingly being made (also see Brubaker, 2001).

Because of this variation in integration policies and national contexts it is very difficult to determine whether findings from one society can be generalized to another. A major problem of course is the fact that in so far as policies with regard to integration have been formulated, the goals of these policies are mostly ambiguous and not operationalized in concrete measur able terms. Undoubtedly, this is one reason why remarkably few systematic studies on the effectiveness and efficiency of immigration-related policies have been conducted. The analyses that have been performed suggest that the increased expenditures in this field have not produced a commensurate improvement in performance (van het Loo et al., 2001).

The above pertains to the integration in terms of participation of first-generation immi grants. The present article focuses on effects of the first generation's participation on the school performance of their children, i.e. the second generation. With regard to this aspect, surpris ingly little research has been conducted. The available studies concentrate on the relation between parental ethnicity/race, educational level and labour market and cultural partici pation, on the one hand, and their children's school achievement, on the other (e.g. Jencks and Mayer, 1990; Gillborn and Gipps, 1996; Driessen, 2001). To our knowledge, dimensions like religious, societal, social and political participation have not yet been included in such analyses, not separately and certainly not in conjunction with each other.

Therefore, what would be helpful is the development of measures for integration that can be used across countries and also across generations of immigrants. Monitoring integration processes in different countries could lead to identifying best practices of integration (cf. Entzinger and Biezeveld, 2003). It is clear that significant knowledge gaps still remain and that many of the findings fail to be introduced into the policy debate in a systematic way and in relation to each other (Entzinger, 2000; van het Loo et al., 2001). It is also important to realize that processes of integration of immigrants are long term by nature (Penninx, 2005).

Notes

We thank Jan Doesborgh for his help with the statistical analyses. The Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) is gratefully acknowledged for funding the project on which this article is based. The research was supported by grant no. 411-20-005 from NWO's Social Science Research Council.

1. It should be noted that the degree of participation needed to be indicative of integration is typically not specified in the form of a criterion. Such commonly used adjectives as 'fully', 'proportionally' or

'equal' provide little help in light of the lack of a clear and unequivocal reference point. 2. We did not include the child's sex in the analyses because there appear to be no significant differ

ences in achievement between boys and girls at this age (e.g. Gorard et al., 1999; Driessen, 2005). 3. We did not combine these analyses because length of residence is a typical immigrant characteristic

that has no meaning whatsoever for native Dutch people. As length of residence by definition only applies to immigrant parents, almost three-quarters of the total sample analysed have no variance on

54




this variable at all. Taken together, including length of residence in one and the same analysis would

undoubtedly lead to problems with regard to interpretation of the findings.

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Biographical Note: Geert Driessen is a senior researcher at the Institute for Applied Social Sciences (ITS) at Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands. He received his PhD on a study of the educational position of ethnic minority students. His research interests include ethnic and social inequality in education, parental participation, preschool and early school education, minority language and culture teaching, school choice, religion, denomination and education and Islamic schools. He has written some 300 articles, papers, reports and books on these themes.

Address: ITS, Radboud University Nijmegen, P.O. Box 9048, 6500 KJ Nijmegen, The Netherlands. [e-mail [email protected]; website: www.geertdriessen.nl]

Biographical Note: Frederik Smit is a senior educational researcher at the Institute for Applied Social Sciences (ITS) at Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands. He received his PhD on a study into the role of parents in primary education. He has published extensively in the areas of parental involvement in education, culture differences in education, participation in decision-making by teachers, parents and students.

Address: ITS, Radboud University Nijmegen, P.O. Box 9048, 6500 KJ Nijmegen, The Netherlands. [e-mail [email protected]; website: www.frederiksmit.nl]

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Effects of Immigrant Parents' Participation in Society on Their Children's School Performance