Catching up – Losing the Edge: Educational Achievements and Ambitions among Children of Mixed Origin

Mixed-origin individuals constitute a key group in assimilation theory, but their socioeconomic attainments are curiously under-researched in the quantitative assimilation literature. Drawing on population-wide Norwegian register data, we analyze how children of mixed origin fare in education compared to children of two immigrant parents, using their native majority peers as a reference. When it comes to educational achievements, we find that children of mixed origin are located between a disadvantaged second generation and the native majority. However, once parental SES is accounted for, the second generation exhibits significantly higher achievements, revealing an advantage that is absent among children of mixed origin. When it comes to educational ambitions, the second generation is advantaged in both absolute and relative terms and, once again, we find no such advantage among children of mixed origin. There are essential variations across country backgrounds. Still, the overall pattern suggests that while children of mixed origin ‘catch up’ to natives in terms of educational achievements, they lose their ‘edge’ vis-à-vis the second generation, particularly in terms of ambitions. This conclusion has important implications for theoretical models of how assimilation processes unfold and warrants further research into patterns of assimilation among the growing mixed-origin population.