Resilient students with an immigrant background. A sociological challenge

Resilient students—those who succeed at school despite a disadvantaged immigrant background—are a common feature in educational systems (OECD 2011); nevertheless, scholars and policy-makers have focused more on the failure of immigrant-origin students rather than their educational success. The chapter offers a review of the main sociological studies that deal with this new topic in the field of migration studies in the US and Europe. These studies explore the upward mobility of an upcoming élite of descendants of migrants, highlighting the fact that the educational success of immigrant students questions the traditional explanations of educational inequality based on family background and the inheritance of social disadvantage from one generation to another.