Social mix in neighbourhood and school? Parental school choice and its impact on educational segregation

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School segregation is currently a socio-spatial and educational key challenge in German and other European cities. Since particularly primary schools have a crucial impact on processes of social mobility, analysing segregation in primary schools is of high importance for research in urban geography: School segregation does not only exacerbate children’s educational opportunities through compositional effects, it also impacts on social interactions and aggravates children’s and parents’ dealing with social and ethnic diversity. Starting point of this research proposal is the aggravation of socio-spatial polarization not only on the neighbourhood level but also on a smaller spatial scale and in particular in educational organisations. Residential and school segregation are strongly interlinked. However, the latter mostly exceeds the former and is thus a main driver in reinforcing socio-spatial inequalities. High levels of social and ethnic segregation become already visible in kindergartens and primary schools. Due to parents’ (socially) selective school choices, high levels of segregation can also be identified in those kindergartens and primary schools located in mixed urban neighbourhoods - which illustrates the high significance of this topic. So far, there is only a small number of geographical research studies on the interplay between residential and school segregation. This research proposal seeks to fill this gap. The proposal’s main aim is the theoretically based, systematic analysis of the drivers and the interplay between residential and school segregation. The project thus contributes to an advancement of knowledge as regards the so far less examined interface between the geography of education and neighbourhood research. As a case study, a neighbourhood from a large city in North Rhine-Westphalia was selected which seems to be particularly suitable to analyse the determinants and mechanisms of parental school choice. The neighbourhood includes five primary schools. Their social and ethnic composition strongly deviates from each other but also from the small-scale socio-spatial composition of the neighbourhood. Based on this case study, the interplay of individual characteristics, (local) information sources and networks, and the development of primary school profiles and information policies as well as their impact on parental school choice practices are analysed. For the first time in the German context, quantitative and qualitative empirical data is combined allowing both to illustrate the extent and development of parents’ school choice strategies and school segregation and to scrutinize the underlying motivations and considerations. The project is based on a combination of a quantitative survey among the parents in five different primary schools, in-depth qualitative parent interviews, and expert interviews, which enables a comprehensive understanding of the structures, processes and mechanisms of school and residential segregation.