In this paper, we intend to take a longitudinal approach to analyse primary schools’ social and ethnic stratification processes in the Lisbon area and its impact on students’ educational transitions – specifically children of immigrants.

In the past decades, education systems – particularly European ones – have been divided between two paradoxical tendencies, following the successful massification of access to at least primary / lower secondary levels of schooling: diversification and stratification. International migration flows of the past decades to Europe have posed new challenges to education systems, and the ways in which they have reconfigured to accommodate these “new publics” have not always succeeded in guaranteeing equality of opportunities.

Studies have shown that within-school curriculum tracking and classroom composition processes, for instance, are often biased along social class, gender and ethnic lines. Even in comprehensive systems schools tend to group students by ability which leads to socially and ethnically homogeneous classrooms (Berisha and Seppänen, 2017). Other times, pre-conceived notions about students bypass actual ability by exacerbating the over-representation of minority and male children in low-achieving classrooms (Connoly et al., 2019) and by over-channelling immigrant students to vocational tracks (Barnan and White, 2011; Roldão and Abrantes, 2019).

Similarly, middle- and upper-class parents have the economic, social and cultural capital to take advantage of the available school choice policies. They enrol their children in what they perceive to be the ‘best schools’ regardless of catchment zones, more often than working-class and ethnic minority families who end up being disproportionately constrained by their socioterritorial surroundings (Van Zanten, 2005). This contributes to between-school dynamics of stratification that might elevate the levels of social and ethnic segregation of certain pupils in socially and/or ethnically homogeneous school contexts (Bonal, Zancajo and Scandurra, 2019).

These discussions matter particularly when we consider how school- and classroom-composition affect students with different characteristics. Working-class and immigrant pupils seem to be particularly affected by their school environments (Calero and Oriol-Escardíbul, 2016; Danhier, 2018) in ways which research has not yet fully clarified. Whilst some studies suggest children of immigrants thrive in mixed or even advantaged school contexts (Seabra, Carvalho and Ávila, 2019), others point towards the existence of a negative impact due to a feeling of isolation in their school/class which translates into negative school outcomes (Firmino et al., 2018). The specific impact of ethnic diversity in schools and classrooms is also controversial, with most studies suggesting its non-significance after accounting for socioeconomic school mix and/or individual student characteristics (Cebolla-Boado and Medina, 2011; Seabra, Carvalho and Ávila, 2019).

Research on the school trajectories of immigrant children, though, is still rare mainly due to the limited availability of longitudinal data. The main contribution of this paper will be towards the debate on socioethnic stratification of educational contexts and its impact on immigrant pupils’ primary school transitions. Is there a noticeable pattern of evolution in these children’s school contexts throughout primary schooling and on their school trajectories?

We employ official Portuguese educational statistics concerning the population of students enrolled in public primary schools in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area between 2016 and 2017, with at least one parent born in a foreign country (aprox. 6.000 pupils across 522 schools). We chose to study the Lisbon area because it represents a “typical case” of a large urban epicentre of economic activity, relevant international migration flows and growing residential suburban expansion; all of these have been shown to be relevant in understanding educational inequalities and processes of between-school competition. Given the nature of the data, we will take a longitudinal approach by following a cohort of students with an immigrant background in the transitioning years from 4th to 5th grade. Controlling their socioindividual characteristics (parents’ education, specific national origin, gender) we analyse how their grade transitions are impacted by changes in their school- and classroom-contexts (proportion of parent’s with low and high educational levels, of immigrants and natives, of boys and girls). Primary school in Portugal (ISCED 1) is segmented into two levels: first (from year 1 to 4) and second (from year 5 to 6). We will focus on the transition from 4th to 5th grade, since previous studies have shown it is then that school failure intensifies for all students but especially for those with African origins (Seabra and Cândido, 2020). Besides, because many Portuguese schools only offer the first level of primary education this transition often implies a change of school and, by default, of classroom-peers. It is therefore an adequate moment in children’s educational trajectories to analyse unequal stratification mechanisms and their impact on school results.

We expect children of immigrants to show varied school transitions according to their specific national origin and their parents’ education. Research has shown that pupils whose parents have not completed at least upper-secondary education, with African or Indian origins and first-generation immigrants are the most vulnerable to school failure. On the contrary, Ukrainian pupils should have school transitions that mirror – or even surpass – those of native students whose parents have the same educational background. Not much research exists on Brazilian pupils in Portugal, but some studies suggest their school transitions might be more successful than those of African children, although less than natives (Seabra and Rodrigues, 2014; Seabra and Cândido, 2020). By employing hierarchical cluster analysis using the school and classroom composition variables mentioned above, we will group schools according to their levels of social and ethnic diversity in both years. We will then be able to track students from one year to the next and assess whether they remained in the same school, changed schools, passed or repeated grades. This will allow us to determine whether their classroom peers’ characteristics and schools’ composition explain their transition from 4th to 5th grade and from 5th to 6th grade, according to their own individual characteristics.

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