This research aims to recognize the obstacles and opportunities affecting the academic trajectories of Moroccan and Muslim female students that are in Catalan universities. A research overview in Spain and specifically in Catalonia displays studies oriented to understand the conditions of minority and immigrant students in the compulsory education levels in order to give proposals that fight discrimination, academic lag and educational dropout. However, most of this research field has focused on factors of failure and rarely takes into account gender as a significant factor to explain the particular situation of these groups. Also, few of these studies focus exclusively in the Muslim and Moroccan community. Therefore, currently there is no research analyzing success trajectories of Moroccan and Muslim young women in Spanish and Catalan higher education context.

From the scarce bibliography dedicated to the study of success trajectories of immigrant and minority students within the European and Spanish context (Abajo & Carrasco, 2004; Carrasco, Ballestín, Bereményi, Casañas, Roca, Molins, Narciso, Paniagua, 2012; Torrabadella & Tejero, 2005; Pàmies, 2008; Pámies, Bertrán, Ponferrada, Casalta, Aoulad & Narciso, 2010; Sancho, Hernández, Fernando, Padilla, Fendler, Arrazola, Giró & Valenzuela, 2010; Bertrán, Ponferrada, & Pàmies, 2014) we identified three central dimensions allowing us to analyze the academic trajectories of Moroccan female students:

Personal dimension. Refers to attitudes and values towards education (such as endurance, determination, ambition, responsibility, etc.) and the usage of agency to the accomplishment of student’s life project.

Family and community dimension. Includes social structures in close contact with the student influencing her academic trajectory (such as the relationship between family and home community, family gender roles, parents support, etc.).

Social and institutional dimension. Refers to the cultural and political conditions of the mainstream society affecting this group. This dimension includes the scholar models and care policies for minority groups, the relationship between school and family, the role of teachers, and the relationship between student and peers.

This work’s theoretical framework has two axes. On one hand, the cultural-ecological perspective (Ogbu, 2003) and its reviews that seeks to analyze the elements influencing academic performance of immigrant and minority students. This means taking into account three elements: their historical relationship with the mainstream society, their current situation within the host society, and the strategies that the students create from their perception of the structure of opportunities offered by the mainstream society. On the other hand, the Islamic feminism (Wadud, 1999; Mernissi, 2001; Barlas, 2008) that entitles the figure of the Muslim woman. This perspective demands the restoration of the original Koranic message about the fundamental right of equality between men and women. Islamic feminism will be helpful to articulate the conditions of Muslim Moroccan woman and to understand how they mobilize their agency and social capital in behalf of their academic trajectories.

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