Article ID: 1801002
Educational attainment of second-generation immigrants is gaining attention in the migration studies in Japan with the rapid increase in the number of immigrants since the 1990s. This issue has been studied intensively in other developed countries, wherein the importance of social integration has been underscored, so far, in terms of theoretical frameworks such as the segmented assimilation theory, which focuses not only on the practical disadvantages experienced by the second generation in a school but also on the socio-structural factors such as the parents' social class and their mode of incorporation. However, few studies have revealed the educational attainment of the second generation of several ethnic groups based on the nation-wide data in Japan. On the contrary, most studies have been clinical and small-sample surveys to assess the second generation' s adaptation to the Japanese school system, not from the viewpoint of its relationship with the social structure, such as the social class of their parents, or their mode of incorporation, which are regarded as powerful determinants of the educational attainment of immigrant children according to the segmented assimilation theory. The present study focuses on the high school enrollment rate of second-generation immigrants depending on the mothers' nationality by using the micro-data of the Japanese population census. In particular, the study applies the segmented assimilation theory to reveal their intergenerational class mobility. The results revealed that children of foreign mothers show a lower enrollment rate in high school than those whose mothers are of Japanese origin. However, their low enrollment rate is not due to their mother' s low social class, but due to their immigrant status per se. To sum up, the segmented assimilation theory is not applicable to the Japanese experience, although the results also revealed that providing more multi-lingual information and more supplemental Japanese language classes are needed to minimize the disadvantages of having a foreign mother, because a longer duration of residency alone cannot compensate for the disadvantages.
