Program: "Segregation, Immigration, and Educational Inequality"

Program Information

The Civil Rights Project, Ghent University, Université Libre de Bruxelles and UCLA's Graduate School of Education and Information Studies are cosponsoring a research conference next fall – September 21 and 22, 2013 -- on issues of segregation and inequality in European and North American schools, focusing on the relationship with immigration and various forms of diversity and social cleavage.  This conference aims to bring together new research addressing these themes as well as examining explicitly comparative work using the best available data.

The first day of the conference will be open to the public and all interested scholars, as well as policy makers and community group leaders, and there will be a modest charge for attendance, $80 - $120 US, which will cover food, materials and related costs. During the second day of the conference, we intend to bring the commissioned authors together with a few key experts in an intensive roundtable to critically discuss each other’s work and explore commonalities, engage in discussions with and to move well edited versions of the strongest papers into publication.  

Day 1-September 21, 2013

08:00-09:00 Registration

09:00-10:15 Panel 1:  School Segregation

Chair: Mieke Van Houtte, Ghent University, Belgium 

Roslyn Arlin Mickelson, University of North Carolina-Charlotte, USA:  The Social Science Evidence on the Effects of Diversity in US K-12 Schools: Implications for 21st Century International Migration

Jannick Demanet, Ghent University:  Student disengagement as a reaction to opportunity structure: The case of de facto social-ethnic school segregation

Tony Gallagher, Queen's University, Belfast, Ireland:  Collaborating schools and porous boundaries: networked solutions to address the impact of separate schools

Orhan Agirdag, Ghent University:  Long-Term Consequences of School Segregation: The Impact of School SES, Racial Density and Racial Diversity on Future Earnings

10:15-10:30 Break 

10:30-11:45 Panel 2:  Structural inequality & Legal remedies

Chair: Orhan Agirdag, Ghent University

Julien Dahner and Emilie Martin, Université Libre de Bruxelles:  Comparing compositional effects in two education systems: the case of the Belgian communities

Kristi Bowman, Michigan State University, USA:  Legal Remedies for School Segregation in the United States and in the European Union

Mathieu Ichou, Sciences Po, Paris, France:  Segregated Within: The Academic Trajectories of Children of Immigrants in British and French Schools   

Meenakshi Parameshwaran, University of Oxford, UK:  School ethnic composition, school poverty composition, and variations in academic progress

11:45-13:00 Lunch w/group discussions led by guest scholars 

Lunchtime Discussion Groups: 

Discussion: Immigration and Educational Inequality: Asian Americans in the U.S.,  led by David Yoo, University of California-Los Angeles, and Ruth Chung, University of Southern California, USA

Discussion:  Educational Discrimination and the Roma in Europe, led by Teresa Sordí i Martí, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain

13:00-14:15 Panel 3:  Social Structures of Schools

Chair: Piet Van Avermaet, Ghent University, Belgium

Carola Suarez Orozco, University of California-Los Angeles, USA:  How are teachers and school personnel prepared to address the needs of immigrant and minority students?

Michael S. Merry, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands:  Arguments and evidence for social integration: A critical analysis

Rina Manuela Contini, University of Chieti-Pescara, Italy:  Immigration, Educational Experience, Segregation/Integration: the Results of a Research in the Schools in Italy

Laura E. Enriquez, University of California-Los Angeles, USA:  The Consequences of Educational Incorporation and Exclusion For Undocumented Young Adults in the United States

14:15-14:30 Break

14:30-15:45 Panel 4: Language and multilingualism

Chair: Piet Van Avermaet, Ghent University, Belgium

Anouk Van der Wild, Ghent University, Belgium:  Multilingual school population: a lever for linguistically innovative classrooms?

Megan Hopkins, Northwestern University, USA:  Organizing for Language Instruction in New Immigrant Destinations: Structural Marginalization and Integration            

Reinhilde Pulnix, Ghent University, Belgium:  Examining the high achievement narratives of youth of color: A contrastive analysis between Belgium and the United States.

Ilana M. Umansky, Stanford University, USA:  Peeling Back the Label: Do Classifications and Specialized Services Help or Hurt Language Minority Students?

15:45-16:00 Break 

16:00-17:00 Panel 5: Academic Outcomes:

Chair:  Patricia Gándara, University of California-Los Angeles, Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles

Jaap Dronkers, Maastricht University, Netherlands:  Educational performance of migrant pupils as the combined result of educational opportunity structures of their origin countries and socio-economic and ethnic school-composition in their destination countries.

Fanny D’hondt, Ghent University, Belgium:  Do school attitudes influence the underachievement of Turkish and Moroccan minority students in Flanders? The attitude-achievement paradox revisited.

Greg Palardy, University of California-Riverside, USA:  The Impact of High School Segregation on the Achievement Gap in the United States

Day 2-September 22, 2013

On the second day of the conference, a roundtable of presenters will be organized. These sessions are open only to researchers whose papers were commissioned for this endeavor. Various themes will be discussed including:

1.     Evaluation of the presentations of the first day

2.     The directions for future research

3.     Valorization strategies

4.     Potential transatlantic collaborations on educational research

5.     Publication strategies with respect to the output of the conference