Second-generation Turkish youth in Europe: Explaining the academic disadvantage in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland

This investigation examines the role of students’ home and school variables in producing the achievement gap between second-generation Turkish students and their native peers in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland. Using the data from PISA 2006, this study supports past findings that both home and school resources affect the educational outcomes of immigrant students in their host society's school system. Specifically, the findings reveal that in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland, second-generation Turkish students had significant disadvantages in terms of allocated resources at home and in school. More often than not, these disadvantages were found to have significantly negative effects in terms of second-generation Turkish students’ test outcomes relative to their native peers. In all three countries, however, the differences between the second-generation Turkish students and their native peers in terms of their family/home resources were found to explain more of the achievement gap than the differences in their schooling resources.

► I examine the effect of home and school resources on test outcomes.
► I assess how the home and school resources are differently allocated and utilized.
► The effect of home resources was greater than that of school resources in our comparison groups.