Ethnic identity and scholastic effort: a multifaceted approach

Some of the empirical contributions previously mentioned point to the fact that ethnic identity partly determines children’s scholastic performance; such influence may occur in several ways, which is possible to understand by firstly clarifying what is generally meant by ethnic identity. From the perspective of cross-cultural psychology, there are three broad theoretical approaches to ethnic identity emphasizing different aspects of the relationship of individuals with the minority group to which they belong (Frable 1997). A strand of literature considers the phases of ethnic identity development ranging from exploring the culture specific to one’s ethnic group to the commitment to its values and goals (Phinney 1989). Social identity theory instead considers the dynamics of intergroup relations through ingroup/outgroup comparisons, where the degree of ethnocentrism of the minority group is associated with discriminatory intergroup behaviour triggered either by conflicting interests or by the need of the dominant group to preserve its positively valued distinctiveness from the low-status group (Tajfel and Turner 1979). Finally, the acculturation approach takes into account how the minority group reacts to the culture of the mainstream society (Phinney 1990); it suggests two types of theoretical lines both taking ethnic identity as ‘embracing various aspects, including self-identification, feelings of belongingness and commitment to a group, a sense of shared values, and attitudes toward one’s own ethnic group’ (Phinney et al. 2001). According to the former, the process of acculturation leads to the weakening of individuals’ ethnic culture as they strengthen the identification with the culture of the host country. The latter alternatively maintains that individuals preserve their own cultural heritage and at the same time adapt to the host society; it is based on two-dimensional models where maintaining one’s own ethnic identity is independent from the assimilation of the new culture. In this respect, acculturation orientations can be characterized by integration, assimilation, separation and marginalization; integration implies that individuals value maintaining both the culture of origin and the adaptation to the host society, whereas with assimilation, they do not consider the preservation of their ethnic culture of value and only seek integration into the mainstream society. Finally, marginalized individuals show little interest in preserving both their own culture and adaptation while separated individuals consider only the preservation of their culture as valuable (Bourhis et al. 1997; Phinney et al. 2001). In this two-dimensional analysis, attachment to ethnic culture and adaptation to host societies depend also on the features of the local context to which people belong like the concentration of a specific ethnic group, the influence of family background, neighbourhood and peer effects (Phinney et al. 2001).

As to the meaning of ethnic identity, we decided to follow the strand of acculturation that embraces both the attachment to one’s own cultural heritage and the adaptation to the host society since this allows considering the multiple facets of how ethnic identity may shape youth behaviour in school. This approach suggests that children living in an immigrant family are often faced with conflicting demands and social pressures from their parents, peers, ethnic communities and host societies and that they mediate among them by developing different attitudes towards adaptation to school. In particular, ethnic socialization practices of parents and ethnic communities influence the meaning and the negative or positive value children attach to their ethnicity and their adjustment to the dominant culture. The process of children’s adaptation is mediated by parent-child relationship as ethnic minority parents transmit their own cultural beliefs, attitudes, values and expectations related to child rearing to the family. Child-rearing practices also concern school adjustment, as parents may be concerned about their children’s socio-economic upward mobility and choose an integration path for them. Therefore, they support their progression in school by transmitting values and expectations that emphasize the importance of adjusting to the mainstream culture through schooling. This shapes children’s achievement motivations and attitudes towards school (Yasui and Dishion 2007). Nevertheless, values on the importance of schooling may differ across ethnic groups, for instance, Southeast Asians value self-reliance and achievement and, generally, Asian youth give priority to good scholastic performance as they feel very responsible to their immigrant parents. Moreover, Asian Americans have optimistic cultural expectations about schooling benefits in terms of social mobility (Hirschman and Lee 2005; Kao and Thompson 2003), and youths react to discrimination by overperforming in school (Kao and Thompson 2003). Interestingly, Punjabi parents, on the one hand, keep their children away from their white peers fearing they will become too Americanized and, on the other, pressure them to conform to school rules and to ignore racism and prejudices (Hirschman and Lee 2005; Portes and Zhou 1993), whereas African Americans often tend to develop their ethnic identity in opposition to the dominant group and to preserve it from integration into the mainstream culture as their identity is rooted in the experience of discrimination. In this case, parents do not transmit values strengthening their children’s achievement motivations, as they do not expect that in the dominant society, education will lead to socio-economic upward mobility (Fordham and Ogbu 1986).

Notably, ethnic differences in the importance of schooling may depend on the fact that parents’ child-rearing and practices are influenced not only by their attitudes towards adaptation but also by the cultural values specific to their ethnic background. The latter conditions the extent of parents’ attention and responsiveness to children’s needs and their expectations for and control of children’s behaviour, all factors that contribute to shape scholastic performance (Yasui and Dishion 2007). For instance, East Asian culture mainly based on Confucian ethics values hierarchical relationships within families where parents discipline and control their sons, who in turn have to respect and obey their parents, fulfil their expectations and honour the family name; in particular, the involvement of parents in following children’s progress in school is very high and academic success is a way to meet their expectations. Latin American culture for child-rearing gives importance to the ties with nuclear family members and extended family networks, which take care of and control children. Familial support is crucial for successful performance in school as it encourages youth to pursue educational goals (Yasui and Dishion 2007). Thus, parents who are more integrated and also attached to their ethnic culture that positively shapes child-rearing and especially scholastic performance may significantly stimulate children to achieve. While parents who show a separated acculturation style with attachment only to their ethnic background, which in addition shows strong incongruities with mainstream school culture, may negatively affect children’s adaptation to school and weaken their motivation.

Aside from parental influence, ethnic community plays a key role as the assimilation into the values and norms of the community also determines the form of youths’ adjustment to the host society and the part of society they assimilate (Portes and Zhou 1993). Adjustment may encompass, for instance, integration and therefore both maintaining the culture of origin and adaptation to the mainstream culture while separation often means assimilation into the adversarial culture of marginalized social groups. Importantly, a vital ethnic community acting as a distinctive and collective entity may make children develop a positive attitude towards their group and less vulnerable to the orientations of the host society like segregation (Bourhis et al. 1997; Phinney et al. 2001). In this respect, some Mexican students belonging to a community with strong cultural ties with both their home country and the USA were able to overcome discrimination and to perform well in school (Portes and Zhou 1993). It may also happen that newly arrived youths may become part of earlier generations’ marginalized groups in their co-ethnic community and assimilate their culture. This is the case of the integration of some Mexican students in the group of Chicanos, native-born Mexican Americans, and of some Haitian adolescents in the minority youths in American inner-city schools (Portes and Zhou 1993). Identifying with these groups has led to the assimilation of their values, which usually disregard education as a means to advance one’s socio-economic status due to the prejudices and discrimination of the host society (Hirschman and Lee 2005). The fact that immigrant students, despite parental influence, may end up integrating into marginalized groups of their co-ethnic community may also depend on the school socio-economic status (SES). Low SES schools often are segregated and characterized not only by lower quality courses but also by very low expectations of significant others like peers and teachers on students’ attainment (Hirschman and Lee 2005). There may be a negative influence of school peers and teachers on immigrants’ integration and social expectations as children end up believing they will not succeed in school and integrate in the host society.

In this context of analysis, it is important to stress that the exclusion of a minority group by a dominant group may cause psychological costs in the process of identification with the mainstream culture (Brown and Capozza 2006). In school, this may imply that pupils belonging to a minority group bear a psychological cost in presence of discrimination, which impinges on their scholastic performance.

Children scholastic performance is also determined by personal traits shaping personal identity generally less permeable to social influences differently from ethnic identity. The locus of control is a component of personal identity particularly relevant to our analysis as it affects individual motivations in that it concerns the extent to which an individual believes that her own actions or characteristics influence outcomes (Rotter 1966; Haußer 1995). In the case of education, effort and hard work are not believed to improve academic achievements, which are rather ascribed to luck. Yet the locus of control is not completely independent from being part of a minority group as, for instance, external attitudes may be influenced by children’s consideration that scholastic achievement is strongly dependent on perceived discrimination. This occurred to some African American students coming from low-quality schools when they reached the college level and realized that they were less prepared than the other students who had attended different high schools. In this context, African Americans tended to ascribe their lower performance to external factors they did not control such as discrimination and were convinced that higher effort would not translate in a better performance in school and labour market (van Laar 2000).

In the following part, attention will be focused on a theoretical model where in light of the above considerations, ethnic identity and the locus of control shape youth’s motivations to exert effort in school.

The present model partly draws on the contribution of Akerlof and Kranton (2002) and of Autiero (2015); Autiero and O’Higgins (2016) in analysing the influence of social identity and the locus of control on scholastic effort; nevertheless, we take into consideration ethnic identity with its multidimensionality as a specific aspect of social identity. Of relevance to our different approach, in the contribution of Akerlof and Kranton (2002), students decide to identify with a social group in school and the benefits from this choice depend on the self-image characterizing such group. Changes in utility are affected by the distance of individual characteristics and behaviour respectively from the ideal promoted by the social category. Importantly, they choose to follow a specific group and therefore the effort level fitting into it, whereas, in our case in line with Autiero (2015), social identity—precisely ethnic identity—directly affects the utility from scholastic effort—e _i —by shaping children’s motivations to exert effort. This occurs through the internalization of the values transmitted by parents, peers and ethnic community members that determine children’s perceived importance given to engaging in academic tasks, which determines the utility from effort. In detail, we characterize a child’s ethnic identity in part in terms of adaptation to the mainstream society’s school and define it as I _Oki , which is affected by the acculturation orientations of child i’s parents belonging to the ethnic group k—I _ki —and of her peers in school belonging to the same ethnic community—Ī _k ; the specification of children’s adaptation is \( {I}_{Oki}={I}_{k i}^{\beta (Di)}{\overline{I}}_k^{\lambda (Di)} \). Parents giving great importance to integration consider scholastic achievements as a means for their children to integrate into the host country; alternatively, they may think that adaptation to school in the host country will be fruitless in order to achieve socio-economic upward mobility. As already mentioned, parental acculturation orientations shape their offspring’s identity through the transmission of the values and cultural expectations either fostering or hampering children’s adaptation to school and thus their motivation to achieve. In school, children may frequently be exposed also to the influence of the group of peers sharing a common ethnic socio-economic and cultural background; the acculturation orientations of peers are represented by Ī _k and behave similar to the ones of parents. As to parental acculturation orientations—I _ki —it is important to specify that in a family where parents transmit values strongly oriented towards adaptation through education, their children derive greater utility from scholastic effort; thereby, they meet parental expectations for their behaviour in school. When parents do not give importance to education and achievements in the host society’s schools, children are not so driven by the need to comply with the behavioural requirements prescribed by them, which is a source of disutility from effort. This influence on the utility may be either strengthened or weakened by the pressure of their school peers—Ī _k ; for instance, a child identity oriented towards integration due to family influences may be undermined by the interaction with pupils of the same ethnic community who reject the values of the mainstream society. To the contrary, children’s positive acculturation orientations are reinforced by similar orientations in their peers. Thus, in the expression defining adaptation, \( {I}_{Oki}={I}_{k i}^{\beta \left({D}_i\right)}{\overline{I}}_k^{\lambda \left({D}_i\right)} \), β(D _i ) and λ(D _i ) capture the influence of parents and school peers on children’s adjustment to schools in mainstream society, respectively; the size of the parameters is affected by children’s reactivity and, in particular, by their perceived discrimination D _i  > 0 in school in the sense that when they feel more discriminated, this lowers the positive influence of parents on children’s adaptation. To the contrary, when parents and/or peers reject adaptation, perceived discrimination strengthens this negative influence.

The other part of ethnic identity E _k —shortly defined as ethnicity—corresponds to the extent to which the culture of ethnic group k promotes education and academic success; such extent also depends on the consistence of ethnic background with mainstream school culture. Ethnicity embodies the values common to parents and community members that they transmit to children through rearing practices. Therefore, the influence of ethnicity on the utility from effort is positive implying that the more favourable to academic progress the culture of origin, the more motivated the children when following the values transmitted by their parents and ethnic community members through rearing practices. The presence of incongruities between home and mainstream school culture weakens the extent to which ethnicity furthers academic progress.

We also consider personal identity; it is individuated by the locus of control, L _i , which is relevant to scholastic effort in as much as individuals with a sense of competence about their abilities and a stronger feeling of control of success and failure in pursuing their own personal goals are likely to be more motivated in school. Individuals who are more internal locus get greater utility for a given effort level to the extent to which they ascribe academic achievements to their own effort rather than to the external environment.

Importantly, children with some degree of integration bear a psychological cost due to the divergence of individual effort e _i from school academic standard e(S), which capture specific knowledge and skills that students must acquire and may also reflect the socio-economic status of schools.

In (1), α and (1 − α)—with α ≥ 0—indicate the relative weights of the standard and identity-driven components of the utility function. When α = 0, only the identity part counts while if α = 1, standard cost/benefit considerations prevail; e _i n _i represents i’s marketable skill or human capital with e _i corresponding to individual effort and n _i to individual ability;¹ effort cost is \( \frac{1}{2}{e}_i^2 \). The components of identity in brackets before e _i show that parents’ and peers’ acculturation orientations, ethnicity and locus of control affect the utility from a given effort level. As to parents’ and peers’ acculturation orientations, I _ki and Ī _k belong to the interval (1, + ∞), respectively. Parameters β(D _i ) and λ(D _i ) belong to the interval (−∞, + ∞) and precisely \( \begin{array}{cc}\beta \left({D}_i\right),\lambda \left({D}_i\right)>0& \forall {D}_i>0\end{array} \) when parents and peers are in favour of adjustment whereas β(D _i ), λ(D _i ) < 0 ∀ D _i  > 0 when they reject adaptation to host countries’ schools. In the former case, parents’ and peers’ influence complement each other in the process of youth’s identity adjustment to the dominant culture \( \left(\frac{\delta^2{I}_{Oki}}{\delta {I}_{k i}\delta {\overline{I}}_k}\right)>0 \); in the latter, when either parents or peers reject adjustment as they believe that it will not lead to their socio-economic mobility, the cross derivative is negative. This means that if, for instance, parents are in favour of adaptation and peers reject it, a higher adaptation due to parents’ influence raises the utility from effort, which in turn is curbed by the negative impact of rising peers’ aversion to adjustment. Importantly, when both parents and peers transmit values in favour of adaptation and perceived discrimination increases, β ′ (D _i ) < 0 and λ ′ (D _i ) < 0 in the sense that higher perceived discrimination weakens children’s positive attitude to adjust. While increased perceived discrimination amplifies the impact of the values against adjustment, therefore, β ′ (D _i ) < 0, λ ′ (D _i ) < 0 and the negative influence on a child’s motivation is stronger than in the previous case.

As to ethnicity, E _k is greater than zero and γ ≥ 0. Parameter γ may capture the attachment of children to the ethnic culture transmitted by their parents and ethnic community. As to personal traits, it is assumed L _i  > 0 and φ(D _i ) > 0, and when perceived discrimination—D _i —becomes stronger, this undermines the influence of internal locus of control on the utility from effort with φ ′ (D _i ) < 0. The second addend in square brackets corresponds to the psychological cost children bear when their effort diverges from the school standard embodying knowledge and skills that students must acquire in host countries’ schools, with e _i  ≤ e(S). The component ϑ(I _Oki , E _k ) is the unit cost of a behaviour that does not meet the standard, it is positive and increasing with respect to both children’s adaptation and ethnicity with \( {\vartheta}_{I_{Oki}}>0 \) and \( {\vartheta}_{E_k}>0 \) implying that the cost of diverging from the school academic standard e(S) rises when a child becomes more adjusted to the culture of the host country and ethnic culture gives greater importance to education. In the latter case, the presence of incongruities between home and mainstream school culture lowers the extent to which ethnicity promotes education and consequently the cost of diverging from the school standard in the host country. This cost indirectly depends also on the degree of perceived discrimination D _i , which weakens children’s attitudes towards integration or strengthens aversion to adjustment and thereby reduces the psychological cost of diverging from the school’s standard e(S).