The role of older siblings in the educational attainment of children with and without migration background in secondary schooling

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Despite the broad state of research on the role of the family background in explaining differences in patterns of educational participation and school success between children and adolescents with and without a migration background in the German educational system, further needs for detailed knowledge as well as research gaps can be identified. Although three-quarters of children under the age of 18 in Germany grow up with at least one sibling as another attachment figure in the family, previous research has focused primarily on the characteristics and resources of the parents. In existing educational research, siblings have so far been mentioned mainly when referring to the abundance of children in migrant families and its negative influence on parental investment of resources and time in the education between the first- and subsequent-born children. Yet, sibling relationships have specific structural advantages and specific qualities compared to parent-child relationships for socialization influences (e.g., horizontality, longevity, the oscillation between love/trust and rivalry/competition). Furthermore, individual siblings possess educationally relevant resources that can be transmitted for educational acquisition. In particular, older siblings have a theoretical significance as role models and surrogate parents, which may be particularly evident in migratory situations, where they can potentially compensate for the disadvantages of parents in host-country-specific human capital and educationally relevant socialization conditions (e.g., lack of competence in the national language, inter-ethnic contacts, and knowledge of educational institutions) by having a lead in the educational system and acting as a bridge to the host-society context. The planned one-year research project has the overarching goal of contributing new explanatory knowledge as well as empirical findings on the educational influence of older siblings to current research on ethnic disparities in secondary education. The theoretical core of the project is the synthesis and extension of existing social class and migration-specific value-expectancy considerations of educational trajectories by the sibling perspective. Assumptions are made about independent as well as compensatory and protective effects of older siblings in association with the (migrant) parents. The empirical core of the project is the analysis of longitudinal data from the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). The data of this household survey, which has been conducted annually since 1984, allow by its structure to link information of both, parents and older siblings, with that of respondents as well as to provide sound empirical findings that go beyond cross-sectional studies.