Some of the best known crucial elements of inequality of educational opportunities regarding social origin are transitions in highly tracked educational systems. Although nowadays there is a notable amount of research relating to this topic in many European countries, there are rather few quantitative studies concerning transitions in the Swiss educational systems, even though inequality of educational opportunities is one of the bigger challenges the Swiss educational system has to face. Another challenge is the great amount of heterogeneity in migrant pupils, as Switzerland is one of the European countries with the biggest quantity of immigrants. Two very critical transitions in the Swiss educational system are the transition from primary to secondary schooling (typically after 6^th grade) as well as the transition from lower secondary to higher secondary school (typically after 9^th grade). After 9^th grade is also the first legitimate exit point in the Swiss educational system. This is crucial because of Switzerland’s highly institutionalized vocational training system, which imposes major disadvantages for low educated people in the labour market.

Our goal is to find indications, whether there are transitions in the schooling system where migrants are tracked differently and if this is the case can it potentially be related to their often inferior social status or are they discriminated against autochthonous children.

We address to the matter of the first transition by empirically examining it with data from 6^th grade students in Zurich schools, using a structural-individualistic approach with an emphasis on primary and secondary effects of social and ethnic origin (cf. Boudon 1974). The rationale behind this theory is that on the one hand migrant children are disadvantaged regarding language skills and therefore school performance (primary effects). Due to negative selectivity of immigration their parents often provide low economic and cultural resources. Apart from the assumption that they are less informed about the opportunities in the Swiss educational system and in particular about the procedures of educational transition, we suppose on the other hand parents’ investment in their offspring’s education is suboptimal due to the limits of their capital (secondary effects). Our results suggest that a major explanation for inferior educational outcomes of migrant children in Switzerland lies in primary effects of social and ethnic origin.

Regarding the second transition, data from the TREE-Study is examined concerning the question if migrant pupils have a higher risk of dropping out of the educational system when having completed compulsory education. Controlling for effects of social origin and school achievement there are still disadvantages for students who are not born in Switzerland. This might indicate (according to theories of statistical discrimination), that nationality can function as a signal for employers indicating a lower productivity and therefore can worsen the chances of migrant students of getting into vocational training. We also examine the further career paths of the low educated pupils in order to find out, if the disadvantages of migrant pupils with low education are amplified in the labour market.

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