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Often second generation young adults and their immigrant parents aspire high and towards general education despite a modest socioeconomic background. Little is known about the interrelation between educational aspirations and institutionally co-structured educational pathways. These interrelations are particularly important in an early tracking and a highly segregated education system like Switzerland, where – in contrast to many other countries – vocational education and training is highly valued and frequently attended. We evaluate how educational aspirations amongst young adults of the second generation and Swiss natives change as young people move through the education system – and thus through different educational contexts. We analyse how these changes interfere with group-specific reference systems, educational pathways and structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the immigrant educational optimism hypothesis using data from Spain. Specifically, we examine the nature of higher educational expectations among migrant-origin families in comparison to non-migrant families, conditional upon students' prior school performance and social background. Our dataset includes more than two thousand students in secondary schools in Madrid and, as an innovation in the literature, allows identical analyses for dyads of parents and children. Our results suggest that immigrant optimism is more likely the result of positive selection of parents as first movers than lack of understanding among migrant families of how to process information regarding their children's educational prospects in the host country. Interestingly, students from migrant-origin families themselves do not share the same optimism as their parents. We argue that migration is linked with "hopeful" aspirations and identities, which is in line with research showing selection among labour migrants on the basis of unobservable characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]