Executive Summary

The best way to measure how well immigrants are integrated into a society is arguably not by how their outcomes compare with those of their native-born peers, but rather by their children’s outcomes. There are always reasons to explain why adult immigrants do not do as well as native-born individuals in the labour market. For example, they may not speak the language of their new country fluently, or their qualifications or work experience obtained abroad may not be recognised, or equivalent to domestic qualifications, or adapted to what is required in the destination country. However, one would not necessarily expect such reasons to apply to immigrants’ children who were born in the country or who arrived when they were quite young and were fully, or almost fully, educated in the country of residence. This would particularly be the case if immigrant parents had the same educational attainment or, more generally, a similar socio-economic background as non-immigrant parents, on average.