The Children of Immigrants at School: A Comparative Look at Integration in the United States and Western Europe

5. How Similar Educational Inequalities Are Constructed in Two Different Systems, France and the United States: Why They Lead to Disparate Labor-Market Outcomes

160 chapter five How Similar Educational Inequalities Are Constructed in Two Different Systems, France and the United States: Why They Lead to Disparate Labor-Market Outcomes Richard Alba, Roxane Silberman, Dalia Abdelhady, Yaël Brinbaum, and Amy Lutz The France-United States comparison is intriguing because of the complex profile of similarities and differences it involves. In terms of incorporation regimes, these two countries are generally viewed as positioned toward the assimilationist end of the spectrum because their citizenship rules allow relatively easy access by immigrants and, based on the jus soli principle, grant citizenship automatically (or, in the French case, quasi-automatically) to immigrants’ children who are born on the national territory (Weil 2002). Both countries also encourage assimilation to the mainstream, though both are largely tolerant of cultural difference. Yet there is little doubt that major inequalities along lines of ethnic origin are salient in both societies. How they are constructed intergenerationally is the question, and here is where the differences between France and the United States become more intriguing, for the two differ systemically in their educational systems and in the functioning of their labor markets. In broad brush strokes, the differences would appear to favor greater equality in educational outcomes between native and immigrant-origin children in France than in the United States, whereas the differences in the labor markets, by contrast, have led to greater employment for the children of immigrants in the United States than in France, albeit often in low-wage jobs. In this paper, we lay out in some detail the basis for these statements and examine the empirical degree of inequality between the children of natives and of immigrants associated these differences. The groups we consider are the Mexicans in the United States and the Maghrebins, or North How Similar Educational Inequalities Are Constructed in Two Different Systems 161 Africans, in France, both low in status. What we find, stated very briefly, is that the two educational systems, despite their manifest differences, produce broadly similar educational inequalities, but the labor-market outcomes for the children of immigrants, at least in terms of employment, have been more favorable in the United States. Whether the Great Recession there that started in 2007–08 will erode this difference must remain for now an unanswered question. Differences in Educational Systems In terms of the fundamentals of its organization, the US educational system would appear much less equipped than the French one to redress the inequalities that children bring into the classroom from their homes and communities . Most significantly, the US system varies considerably from one location to another, while the French system is organized to be more uniform across space. Among rich nations, the funding of American public schools rests to an unusual degree on locally and regionally raised taxes, while the national government plays a limited role. This system contributes to marked inequalities among schools in resources and in the characteristics of teachers (e.g., Hochschild and Scovronick 2003; Kozol 1991; Orfield 2001). These inequalities impact negatively on minorities, both native and immigrant, because of residential segregation and their concentration in places that are relatively impoverished. From the perspective of its organizing principles—we are not yet speaking of its operation in actuality, which is moreover disputed—the French system treats schools more uniformly, reducing (but not eliminating ) the opportunities for affluent areas to provide their schools with greater resources. Moreover, the French government has tried to counteract the impact of social inequalities on education. In 1981, it put in place a policy, the ZEP (for Zones of Educational Priority), to provide additional funding to schools in difficulty according to criteria that include the percentage of immigrants in the catchment area. The French system has also undertaken a major “democratization ” in recent decades, with the aim of opening up pathways for working -class and immigrant students to the baccalauréat, the indispensable credential earned at the end of the high school years that leads to higher education . One sign of this democratization has been the successive postponement since the 1950s of the moment in the educational career when students are 162 Richard Alba, Roxane Silberman, Dalia Abdelhady, Yaël Brinbaum, and Amy Lutz separated between vocational and academic tracks (Merle 2002; Prost 1968); simultaneously, long-sequence vocational tracks have been established at the upper level. These developments have especially affected the short-sequence vocational curricula (Silberman...