Migrations Programme - [07/02/2009]

The gap between aspirations and expectations in “second generation” immigrants

Presentación del estudio de Alejandro Portes y Rosa Aparicio

What are their aspirations and expectations? What do they say about the education system? What do they think about Spain? These and other questions are included in a longitudinal study on the social and economic adaptation of the sons and daughters of immigrants in Spain – known as the “Second Generation” – and the preliminary conclusions of this study were presented at the CIDOB Foundation. The study's authors, Alejandro Portes, Director of the Center for Migration and Development at Princeton University, and Rosa Aparicio, a researcher from the Institute for Migration Research of Comillas Pontifical University, presented the results for Barcelona from the first phase of the study; the corresponding data for Madrid were presented at the beginning of this year.

The research study includes a highly representative statistical sample of more than 7,000 teenagers – interviewed in almost equal proportions in the Metropolitan areas of Madrid and Barcelona – who belong to the “second generation”. That is to say, they were born in Spain of foreign fathers or mothers, or they are the children of immigrants who arrived in Spain at a very early age (a group that is known as “the 1.5 generation”). This longitudinal study – which monitors its subjects from adolescence until adulthood – is a pioneering one in Spain, and has been designed for use in developing public policy, especially in the areas of integration and citizenship.

With respect to the results from the first stage, Portes and Aparicio stressed the similarity between the results from Barcelona and Madrid, and the surprising diversity of nationality of origin among the teenagers, in spite of the fact that Spain is a country of recent immigration. Furthermore, the authors emphasised the gap between the educational aspirations and expectations of these young people, and pointed out, as a positive sign, that most of these young people say that they have never experienced any kind of discrimination or rejection.

Also participating in the presentation were Cristina Gortázar, the Director of the Institute for Migration Research of Comillas Pontifical University, Gemma Pinyol, the Programme Coordinator at the CIDOB Foundation, and Oriol Amorós, Secretary for Immigration at the Generalitat of Catalonia. The latter stressed the importance of the study, and declared that the Generalitat intended to monitor the educational results of immigrants' children; he also made an interesting speech on the need to speak about identities in the plural, and not to always link them with the idea of obtaining nationality. Amorós also highlighted the need to support political action with this kind of study, works that carefully analyse the details of a recent, complex and plural reality.

>> Work Documents: La Segunda Generación en Barcelona: Un Estudio Longitudinal. (pdf 265kB)

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