Educational attainment of children of Italian immigrants in France

Roberto Impicciatore, Università di Roma "La Sapienza"

During more than one century consistent flows of migrants left Italy with destination France. In the 1999 the Italian second generations is still the largest group among all the children of immigrants in France. The socio-demographic literature is full of analysis on Italians immigrants but rarely the interest has been devoted to the second generations. The survey called “étude de l’histoire familiale” (EHF) represents an important occasion in order to study this group and, specifically, to evaluate differences in the educational attainments between autochthones and children of Italian immigrants. Taking into account the different composition between groups in terms of family resources, crucial differences emerge between cohorts, indicating radical changes occurred in the integration process lived by Italians immigrants in France before and after the second world war, and among different categories of second generations (with one or both immigrant parents; born in France or arrived during childhood).