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This article deals with the impact of ethnic origin on individual employability, focussing on the first stage of the hiring process. Deeply, the authors’ goal is to fathom whether there is a preference for native job candidates over immigrants, decomposing the discrimination against minority groups into its statistical and taste-based components by means of a new approach.

The authors built up a data set by means of an ad hoc field experiment, conducted by sending equivalent fictitious CVs in response to 1000 real online job openings in Italy. The authors developed the discrimination decomposition index using first- and second-generation immigrants.

The authors’ main result is that both first- and second-generation immigrants are discriminated compared to Italians. In between the two categories, second-generation candidates are discriminated especially if their ethnicities are morphologically different from those of natives (i.e. Chinese and Moroccans). This last finding is a clear symptom of discrimination connected to taste-based reasons. On the other hand, first-generation immigrants of all nationalities but Germans are preferred for hard-work jobs.

The authors develop the discrimination decomposition index to measure the proportion of the two kinds of discrimination (statistical and taste-based) over the total one and apply a probit model to test the statistical significance of the difference in treatment between the three groups of natives, first-generation and second-generation immigrants.

Studies examining immigrant generational status and violence have supported differences in the prevalence of violence between these groups. The purpose of this paper is to measure relevant risk factors for violence to focus on whether negative perceptions may contribute to understanding the between-generations differences in violence. Based on the literature, it is theorised that pro-violence attitudes would be related to and be higher in second-generation immigrants than first-generation immigrants, and that negative perceptions would mediate the relationship between pro-violence attitudes and violence.

Data to answer the study’s key questions were taken from the 2010-2011 UK citizenship survey, where only the main sample was analysed.

The findings reveal that first-generation immigrants have a higher prevalence of pro-violence attitudes than the native population.

This suggests that there is an intergenerational transmission in violent attitudes, and this is a risk factor for actual violence in second-generation immigrants.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the gap in reading literacy of young immigrant children in Italy and examine if this gap is significantly influenced by pupils’ length of stay in Italy and country of origin.

The author estimate a standard education production function where student test performance in language is modelled as a function of the native vs immigrant first- and second-generation status and a set of additional variables that control for students, schools and catchment area characteristics. In the analysis the author use the 2010-2011 school-year data for four stages of schooling: second and fifth grade/year of primary school, sixth grade of lower secondary school and tenth grade upper secondary school.

Results confirm the presence of a significant gap between natives and immigrants students in school outcomes for all grades, with first-generation immigrants showing the largest gap. Further, comparing the results between first- and second-generation immigrant students suggests that the average significant gap observed in the first generation is mainly due to the negative performance of immigrant children newly arrived in Italy. That is, for first-generation students, closing the gap with second-generation ones seems to be, for the most part, a matter of time. At the same time, the gap between natives and second-generation immigrants remains significant in all grades. Finally, when the author compare the results across the different years, it turns out that interventions at younger ages are likely to be more effective.

Despite the availability of a rich set of controls, endogeneity issues may play a role in the analysis.

Results suggest that if the foreign children’s late arrival is the result of national migration policies on family reunification, the authorities need to carefully compare the possible benefit of delaying immigrant family reunification against the possible costs of students’ lower school performance.

Among economist, only few recent studies address the important question of whether the age at arrival and the length of stay in the host country matters for immigrants’ educational achievements. Moreover, while according to PISA 2009 results, Italy has some of the largest native-immigrant school performance gaps among OECD countries there are no studies that investigate this issue.

This study aims to examine the housing outcomes of natives and multiple generations of non-natives using a longitudinal survey data in Britain.

The authors use longitudinal data from Britain, in which they can observe multiple generations of immigrants and their demographic and economic information.

The probability models for housing tenure reveal significant variation in the outcomes which are robust to several econometric specifications.

As migration and its impact on local economy is a highly debated topic across several major regions of the world, the findings bring out important insights with policy implications. The research is limited by the sample size of the longitudinal survey.

The empirical evidence on the topic is quite limited with mixed findings. Especially, the authors’ ability to look through multiple generations is unique in identifying the variation in housing outcomes for the native and non-native citizens.

This chapter examines the patterns of immigrants’ integration in a state of the Midwest of the United States, Indiana, which has experienced a growth of more than 250% of the foreign-born population in the last 20 years. The study, based on in-depth interviews and document analysis, examines the ways that immigrants blend into mainstream society in everyday life and in social interactions, as well as the obstacles they encounter in this process. The study reveals the cultural changes in the host culture as a result of the large number of immigrants who have established their residence in this state, the dichotomies that emerge between “natives” and “newcomers.” It also shows that immigrants stay connected to their country of origin through electronic media (in particular television and computers) and how this technology affects the process of integration. Finally, the study demonstrates that there is a process of segmented assimilation and variations in the immigrants’ sense of identity according to their socioeconomic status and ethnic background.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the role played by parental education endowments vs intergenerational transmission of education in education differences between second-generation immigrants and natives for the French case.

First, estimates of human capital accumulation functions are performed by using a representative sample of the French population. Second, the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition technique is implemented to underline the specific roles of differences in parental education endowments and of differences in intergenerational transmission in education between origins.

The econometric estimates of human capital accumulation function parameters underline that the determinants of education level (and their magnitude), differ substantially between natives and migrants. They also underline evidence of heterogeneity in the intergenerational transmission of education among the different origins of migrants in France. The Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition results show that parental education endowments account differences for a significant part of the education gaps among origins. No evidence is found that differences in parental transmissions of education explain these gaps.

The paper focusses on France, a country with a rich history of immigration in the twentieth century. The econometric analysis is based on a rich source of data for France that allows studying intergenerational mobility in education and also distinguishing natives from second-generation migrants based on their geographical origin.

Dominant in the urban sociology literature on immigrant incorporation is the role of ethnic enclaves – ethnic neighborhoods that provide a “port of entry” or “context of reception” and help facilitate incorporation in the host society by generating informal resources, networks, and institutions that provide linguistic and cultural services and products (Portes & Rumbaut, 1990). While New York City's stature as a global city is replete with nostalgia about historic ethnic immigrant neighborhoods, contemporary immigrant settlement is once again transforming urban landscapes not only by renewing enclave formations but by creating numerous multiethnic, multiracial neighborhoods (Hum, 2004). As often cited, in no other historic period has New York City received as diverse a range of people from all over the world – certainly, this diversity is reshaping local neighborhood landscapes.

A focus on how visual cultures in domestic spaces influence older migrants' identification with the homeland has been noted in previous research, ¹ yet migrant youth have not typically been the sole subjects of investigation in this regard. This chapter seeks to fill this gap by offering insight into the practices of young Indian women in domestic spaces and how these practices influence their sense of belonging to India. This chapter highlights the practices of young Indian women living in Brisbane, Australia, through an exploration into how the young women recreate their histories and cultural attachments in domestic spaces. The research presented in this chapter illustrates the processes of emotional attachment for young migrants and how these processes demonstrate new ways of practising diaspora, including the use of the internet to learn about their cultural histories. With the use of PhotoVoice, where photographs were retrieved from mobile phones and the internet, the participants discussed their everyday lives relating to their emotional attachments to material objects in domestic spaces and the connection to their identities. This chapter's main argument is to highlight the need for researchers to avoid the tendency to place young migrants into the same diasporic categories as their parents and to recognise the diverse ways in which young migrants actively shape their own cultural attachments.

In recent times the relationship between social stratification and internet use has become more complex. In order to understand the new configuration of the digital divide, this paper examines the relationship between socioeconomic background and digital engagement among youths.

This study explores digital inequalities among Italian teenagers from a holistic perspective. It draws on primary data obtained with a triangulation of methods: a survey on a representative sample of 2,025 high school students and 56 semi-structured interviews with teenagers from different social classes.

The statistical models indicate that cultural capital and parents’ occupational status do not associate with broader social media use but are positively related with online information-seeking. The interpretative analysis suggests that teenagers from the upper-middle class make sense of the internet “vertically,” in affiliation with parental socialization, and are more concerned with capital enhancing activities. Instead, teenagers from less advantageous social contexts appropriate the internet “horizontally,” jointly with peers, and are mostly interested in social-networking and UGC production.

School track, along with parents’ socioeconomic status and cultural capital, influences teenagers’ internet use. Further studies could explore whether school tracking contributes to digital inequalities.

The study extends Annette Lareau’s theory of parenting styles and social reproduction, but also obtains innovative results related to digital inequalities among youth. Contrary to expectations, teenagers from less advantageous social backgrounds enrolled in vocational schools have better chances to actively participate in social media than teens from the upper-middle class in academic-oriented high schools.

Scandinavian societies do not figure prominently as study objects in the international social science literature. To the extent they do, their analysis tends to revolve around one seemingly unavoidable concept, that of equality. There is much agreement among Scandinavia experts that if there is one cultural trait that recurs again and again in this part of the world it is what some have described as “the passion for equality” (Graubard, 1986). Many writers have suggested that the Nordic passion for equality springs from a peculiarly strong preoccupation with equity (rettferd). But this is not the only reason why: according to Hans Frederik Dahl (1984, p. 95) “[t]he Nordic equity ethos…appears to apply both to the political action of leveling out – making the rich pay, taxing the top – and, in a jealous comparison, of making sure that nobody overtakes and passes you in position or possessions.” Like Dahl, other Norwegians consider envy to be a central element in this quest for equality, a sort of Nordic “crab antics” (Wilson, 1973).¹ Envy provides a plausible explanatory frame for the drive at leveling out – “making the rich pay, taxing the top” – a meaning the Norwegian term likhet does indeed encompass. But in addition to equality likhet also means similarity or sameness, a parity that does not necessarily have to do with equity and cannot always be described in terms of getting rid of (unfair) privileges. Earlier debates on the Norwegian notion of equality were often inconclusive because they failed to address this critical duality of meaning which lies at the core of the concept of likhet. To assume that likhet is only a matter of equality, and that it all boils down to envy is too simplistic. In this case, the question that needs to be addressed is: can envy account for the drive at cultural assimilation? Can it explain demands made by the masses to individuals who are neither richer nor more powerful? I am thinking for example of the kind of relations that have been observed between Norwegians and Saami in the Helgeland region (Henriksen, 1991). Here, Saamis’ claims to a different identity and a different experience are frequently met with the non-Saami majority’s counter-claim that there are no differences, cultural or otherwise, between the Saami and themselves. “When the Saami person insists that his or her identity is rooted in a Saami culture, s/he may be requested to specify what such differences consist of,” writes Henriksen (p. 410). This emphatic denial of difference is not perceived by Saami as an inclusionary device to integrate them within the warm embrace of a universal Norwegian Gemeinschaft. Rather, says Henriksen, they view it as “a lack of recognition by the encompassing Norwegian society of their cultural and social identities and their expression, and of what they perceive to be their legitimate rights” (p. 414); in other words, they view it as an attempt by the Norwegian majority to deny Saami their right to experience life in general and ethnic encounters in particular in a way that differs from the majority’s experience. When played out in relation to individuals and groups that are marginal, dominated, or simply in minority, the quest for likhet cannot be motivated by envy. Rather than “passion for equality,” therefore, it would be more accurate to describe this cultural trait as “antipathy for difference.” Such antipathy, I suggest, is grounded in a normative expectation of conformity in behavior, experience, and awareness, to an unquestioned cultural pattern embedded in, and structured by, daily practice, and with ramifications in all areas of social life. In this sense, equality (sometimes translated into Norwegian as likeverd, literally “equal worth,” but more commonly as likhet) rests on the fundamental requirement of cultural similarity (also known, as we have seen, as likhet): to be equal is first and foremost to be alike (see Gullestad, 1984, 1992). The opposite of likhet, ulikhet, can mean either difference or inequality. Most of the time it is conceptualized as both.² Of course, the conceptual and sociological boundaries between equality and similarity are blurred everywhere, not only in Norwegian culture. Nor am I suggesting that Norwegian society is empirically devoid of inequality or that instances of anti-egalitarian behavior do not obtain in real life. Nonetheless, these empirical observations do not make the Norwegian normative discourse on equality-as-similarity any less real or any less compelling.