The Children of Immigrants at School A Comparative Look at Integration in the United States and Western Europe

"This tightly focused volume, based on a highly innovative comparison of the United States and Europe, provides an indispensable guide to understanding the problems of and prospects for the children of immigrants in different educational contexts. Full of valuable and stimulating insights, this is an important contribution to the comparative analysis of immigration." - Nancy Foner,author of In a New Land: A Comparative View of Immigration "Virtually all developed nations have become countries of immigration, and schools have become the crucible for assimilation in each society. The remarkable collection of studies assembled by Richard Alba and Jennifer Holdaway reveal how the children of immigrants are faring in schools of the United States, France, the Netherlands, Britain, Sweden, and Spain. Their comparative lens reveals the barriers to successful incorporation shared in all settingssegregation, tracking, unequal school funding, concentrated disadvantage and advantaged parents reacting to preserve the status quo. But the institutional variety they uncover also reveals many promising pathways forward. The book is of value not only to scholars of immigration, but to anyone concerned with educating the disadvantaged." - Douglas Massey,author of Brokered Boundaries: Creating Immigrant Identity in Anti-Immigrant Times "[T]his exciting new volume presents compelling new ideas for researchers of immigrant youth to consider in developing measures of inequality, strategies for responding to inequality, and testing strategies for their effectiveness. Its lessons, and those of future research it will seed, can be implemented by considering the use of research in policy and practice. The book puts forth an exciting charge" (Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies)