Navigating the school system in Sweden, Belgium, Austria and Germany: School segregation and second generation school trajectories

In this article we describe and explain how children of immigrants navigate their educational careers. Sequence analyses followed by optimal matching is used to cluster individual educational trajectories in four European countries, which differ in national educational systems, ranging from comprehensive to highly differentiated (Sweden, Belgium, Austria and Germany). Samples are young adults of the Turkish and Moroccan second-generation and the majority group (aged 18–35) in seven cities in the selected countries ( N = 4022). We examine how perceived segregation and friendship networks affect the routes that students take through the educational system, i.e. school trajectories. Across school systems, having majority group friends increases the chances of following academic trajectories that end with university attendance. The effects of perceived school segregation are mixed. More comprehensive school systems protect against negative effects of segregation for second-generation students.