The Rise of the Second Generation: Aspirations, Motivations and Academic Success of Chinese Immigrants’ Children in Hong Kong

Most studies adopt the culture perspective to explain the second-generation immigrants’ advantage in education, paying little attention to immigrants’ selectivity based on unmeasured psychological attributes. We identify four subjective factors that could contribute to immigrants’ outstanding performance, and employ mediation analysis to examine how much of the effect of immigrant status on academic achievement is mediated through these factors. We examine the self-selection hypothesis in the context of Hong Kong, as its unique setting enables us to control for the effect of cultural factors and focus on the selectivity effect. The analysis of 2003 PISA data confirm that, having strong motivations to find a better life and high aspirations for upward mobility can largely explain immigrant children’s academic success, with educational aspiration playing a particularly important role. Aspirations, Motivations and Academic Success of Chinese Immigrants’ Children in Hong Kong 3 Immigrants are a highly selected group. Even when they have relatively modest educations and few financial resources, they have shown that they have the drive, ambition, courage, and strength to move from one nation to another. Their second generation offspring are, therefore, the children of exceptional parents. Although parents may have measurable characteristics that put their children at risk----low education, low incomes, poor language skills, and so on----they have unmeasured characteristics that make them different kinds of parents, mostly in ways that are advantageous for their children. Inheriting the City: The Children of Immigrants Come of Age, Kasnitz, Mollenkopf, Waters, Holdaway (2009)