Educational aspirations among ethnic minority youth in Brussels: Does the perception of ethnic discrimination in the labour market matter? A mixed-method approach

Recent contributions in educational research have shown that the disadvantage of ethnic minorities in school performances cannot be entirely explained by their disadvantaged socioeconomic status. This ethnic disadvantage is not only composed of differences in academic performance, but also of variations in educational choices and aspirations. While the current debate focuses mainly on explaining ethnic differences in school test scores, much less has been done in investigating ethnic differences in educational aspirations. To contribute to this debate, this paper analyses ethnic differences in the level of tertiary education pupils want to achieve as well as the level of education their parents want them to achieve.

Based on a mixed-method approach (3121 questionnaires and 25 interviews of pupils), our contribution investigates ethnic differences among nine ethnic minority groups of pupils in Brussels with regard to their educational aspirations and the aspirations that their parents have for them.

The multivariate analysis of the questionnaires shows that parents´ aspirations of all nine ethnic minority groups turn out to be significantly higher than the ones of the majority. However, only pupils from four out of the nine ethnic minorities hold significantly higher aspirations than the majority group. In addition, our mixed-method results did not support the hypothesis on perceived ethnic discrimination on the labour market in explaining the higher educational aspirations of ethnic minority youth. Among ethnic minority youth with high aspirations, the awareness of the intergenerational social mobility project of their parents and the willingness to pursue it play without doubt a role in the construction of their aspirations and career choices. In this case, the educational aspirations are closely linked to the intergenerational social mobility project of their parents. Thus, we conclude by highlighting the relevance of the positive selectivity hypothesis in explaining ethnic differences in educational aspirations.