People with migration background are considered predominantly unsuccessful, problematic and less educated. What concerns the acquisition of education in a European context, foreign youths from migrant families are at a disadvantage compared to native students, and this is true for the field of pre-school institutional support and the field of primary and secondary school education as well as vocational training (e.g. Becker & Lauterbach, 2004). For example in Switzerland only every tenth student with a minority background qualifies for university studies (Imhasly, 2004). In Switzerland and Germany trainees with migration background search longer for a job after completing successfully their training compared to trainees without migration background (e.g. Autorengruppe Bildungsberichterstattung, 2008).

However, such data also express the predominant, deficit-oriented point of view from which the issue of “migration and acquiring competences” is usually looked at. But this prevents us from recognizing the fact that nevertheless there are successful young people with a migration background in our schoolsystem. There is good empirical evidence for their existence, e. g. in the Anglo-Saxon countries in the Swann report (Department for Education and Science, 1985) or in the Swiss National Science Foundation Project on “Secondos” (Bolzmann et al., 2003). Although various, mostly qualitatively-oriented studies (e.g. Hamburger et al., 2006 or Raiser, 2007) have proven that educational success with a migration background is definitely possible and that there is evidence for migrants successfully developing their performance during vocational training and further on. However, statistic data are almost non-existent.

On the basis of data of the three-years longitudinal study MIRAGE (MigrantInnen als gesellschaftliche Aufsteiger – Migrants as Ascenders) this contribution analyses in a quantitative way people with a migration background who have completed their vocational training with particular success in comparison to successful natives trainees. In the focus of interest are the guiding questions about the conditions of their success in vocational training and about their pathways into professional work after training and further education – with a specific interest on different patterns among students with migration background.

Five theoretical explanation patterns for the educational outcome of migrants build the basis of the empirical analysis. They are explanations of cultural deficits, human capital-theoretical approaches, as well as explanations based on features such as school, institutional discrimination or the resilience concept (Stamm, Leumann, Kost 2014). The potential influential factors derived from these theoretical approaches will be put together to form a working model for the explanation of educational and work success following Heller (1997). The model distinguishes three main groups of variables: predictor, moderator and criterion variables. As predictors, all learning and development conditions are of interest which we assume to be in a causal relationship to the criterion performance. Moderator variables are non-cognitive characteristics and environmental conditions as systematically moderating the connection between predictors and criterion. Under criterion variables, those performance variables are summarized which are supposed to be explained: educational and work success. 

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