The effect of immigrant peers in vocational schools

Tommaso Frattini and Elena Meschi

No 13305, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: This paper provides new evidence on how the presence of immigrant peers in the classroom affects native student achievement. The analysis is based on longitudinal administrative data on two cohorts of vocational training students in Italy’s largest region. Vocational training institutions provide the ideal setting for studying these effects because they attract not only disproportionately high shares of immigrants but also the lowest ability native students. We adopt a value added model, and exploit within-school variation both within and across cohorts for identification. Our results show small negative average effects on maths test scores that are larger for low ability native students, strongly non-linear and only observable in classes with a high (top 20%) immigrant concentration. These outcomes are driven by classes with a high average linguistic distance between immigrants and natives, with no apparent additional role played by ethnic diversity.

Keywords: Immigration; Education; Peer effects; Linguistic distance; Ethnic diversity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I20 J15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur, nep-mig, nep-net and nep-ure
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Related works:
Journal Article: The effect of immigrant peers in vocational schools (2019)
Working Paper: The effect of immigrant peers in vocational schools (2017)
Working Paper: The Effect of Immigrant Peers in Vocational Schools (2017)
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