A case of “second generation” disadvantage in internal migration: a challenge to theory?

The paper uses data from the Turin Longitudinal Study (Studio longitudinale torinese, henceforth SLT) of linked census data from the 1971, 1981, 1991 and 2001 censuses to show the existence of educational inequalities among the children of regional migrants to Turin. As we will show, using the relatively sparse data on international migrants in the current SLT database and references to the literature, the patterns are surprisingly similar to those documented for children of international migrants. In other words, in this case, regional labour migration is associated with occupational and educational disadvantage among a "second generation", not dissimilar to that documented for many groups in the wake of international migration. We believe these results are not only of local interest, because they have implications for the way disadvantage is generated (or not generated) among children of migrants generally. This kind of situation of regional migration is in fact an interesting test case, because several important factors often associated with disadvantage in international migration are missing. Regional migrants were, of course, citizens, and did not have the disadvantages of being undocumented which many international migrants do, at least in the first generation. In addition, we argue that "cultural differences" between migrants and locals – often evoked to explain second generation disadvantage – were probably quite small in the Turin case so we believe other explanations are needed.