International migrations, class achievement and social origin in Europe

Both the research on social stratification and mobility and studies on migration and geographical mobility deal with the issue of inequality and the influence of ascribed characteristics on life chances. However, the study of migration ceased being a core topic for stratification research, therefore the interrelation between stratification and migration studies are still limited and poorly theorized. First, migration studies focus on the penalization of ethnic minorities, but they often undervalue the role of migrants’ social origin. Second, research on social stratification and mobility often neglect that international migration has been the main driver of social change in many European countries, making contemporary societies more ethnically heterogeneous then in the past. From this standpoint, the research aim is twofold: 1) we want to compare class achievement and intergenerational social mobility of migrants and natives in Europe, quantifying and describing the ethnic penalty on these two outcomes. More precisely, differently from the previous literature, we provides a more encompassing definition and measure of ethnic penalty, including in the model detailed controls for the social origin; 2) we study the heterogeneities by social class of origin of the two aforementioned outcomes, showing to what extent the origin from a certain social class can affect the ethnic penalty. In both cases, a comparative analysis perspective will be adopted at the European level, in order to verify whether, and to what extent, the outcomes expected differ according to the socio-economic context of insertion, overcoming the limits of studies focusing on single national cases.