Conference Program

The study investigates how demographic, familial, and behavioural factors shape educational aspirations and university attendance among students with an immigrant background in Italy, adopting a longitudinal perspective. Over the past three decades, migration flows have significantly increased the presence of immigrant-origin students in Italian schools, raising important questions about their integration and educational trajectories. Persistent inequalities remain between immigrant-origin and native peers, often linked to socio-economic disadvantage, limited cultural capital, and reduced parental familiarity with the Italian education system.

The analysis addresses a key gap in the literature: the relationship between aspirations expressed during upper secondary school and their actual fulfilment through university enrolment and continued attendance. While numerous studies have examined the determinants of aspirations, far fewer have assessed whether these expectations translate into concrete educational outcomes, largely due to the scarcity of longitudinal data. To overcome this limitation, the study links the 2015 “Integration of the Second Generation” survey conducted by Istat with administrative data from the MIUR on university enrolments from 2015 to 2022. This unique dataset makes it possible to follow students across the transition to higher education and to analyse both enrolment and continuity of studies.

The theoretical framework draws on expectancy-value theory, which emphasises the role of motivation, perceived competence, and subjective evaluations in shaping educational choices. At the same time, the study engages with the so-called aspiration–achievement paradox: immigrant-origin students often report high educational aspirations but achieve comparatively lower outcomes. Two main explanations are considered. The immigrant optimism hypothesis attributes high aspirations to the positive self-selection and ambition of migrant families, while blocked opportunities theory suggests that structural disadvantages in the labour market encourage immigrant families to view education as the primary route to upward mobility. Despite strong motivation, structural constraints—such as concentration in vocational tracks and higher dropout risks—may limit the realisation of ambitions.

Using regression models, the study examines how personal characteristics (gender, citizenship, age at arrival), family background (parental education, socio-economic conditions), school factors (track, prior performance), and subjective resources (self-confidence, perceived academic success) influence both aspirations and their fulfilment. Particular attention is devoted to gender differences. Descriptive findings reveal a marked female advantage: girls are more likely to aspire to university, to enrol, and to persist in their studies. However, patterns vary across citizenship groups, and the determinants of success may differ between boys and girls.

Overall, the findings highlight the complex interplay between structural resources and individual motivations in shaping the educational trajectories of immigrant-origin youth. While aspirations are generally high, their translation into university attendance depends strongly on socio-economic conditions, academic pathways, and migration-related factors. By identifying the conditions that enable students to achieve their goals, the study provides evidence to inform policies aimed at reducing inequalities and supporting the long-term educational success of young people with a migrant background in Italy.

This paper explores how university students with migrant background in Italy imagine and pursue their futures, and how these projections intersect with identity, belonging, and experiences of inequality within tertiary education. We approach universities as ambivalent spaces, marked by both inclusionary and exclusionary dynamics (Gilberti et al. 2025), sites where aspirations are nurtured and social mobility becomes thinkable, but also arenas in which structural constraints, racialization, and symbolic boundaries are reproduced. In this context, future orientations offer a privileged lens through which to examine how inequality is experienced, negotiated, and transformed.

The paper draws on qualitative research conducted within a broader national project on Italian youth and their orientations toward the future. It focuses on a case study of young adults with migrant backgrounds who have accessed or completed tertiary education. By centring on students who have entered university pathways, the study does not aim to present “success stories,” nor to deny persistent educational inequalities affecting children of migration in Italy - often described in terms of educational segregation (Bozzetti 2021). Rather, it investigates how aspirations are formed and pursued from within unequal social structures, and how higher education becomes a key terrain where experiences of exclusion and projects of future-making intersect.

Based on semi-structured narrative interviews, the analysis reconstructs participants’ educational trajectories and examines how intercultural daily practices as well as experiences of discrimination and misrecognition shape both their sense of belonging and their expectations for the future. Yet these narratives also reveal strategies of navigation, reflexivity, and growing critical awareness. University pathways emerge as spaces in which constraints are not simply endured but interpreted, contested, and re-signified.

The paper focuses on two interconnected issues. First, it explores how experiences of exclusion within educational institutions inform processes of identity construction and belonging, shaping the ways in which young adults position themselves within Italian society. Second, it examines how aspirations and future expectations intersect with advanced educational pathways and are reconfigured through the university experience, potentially fostering a sharper awareness of the structural dynamics shaping students’ opportunities and encouraging renewed commitments to countering exclusion and contributing to a fairer society.

In this perspective, the future can be understood as a site of social transformation (Appadurai 2013). The anticipatory practices through which these young adults imagine what may lie ahead - and what they would like it to be - are shaped by present inequalities, yet simultaneously act upon them. Their educational projects thus operate at both personal and collective levels, mobilizing belonging, recognition, and claims to justice (Colombo, Rebughini 2012). In this sense, the children of migration who reach the higher stages of the education system - often overcoming multiple obstacles - can be understood as powerful agents of transformation, whose aspirations extend beyond individual social mobility to encompass collective well-being and societal reconfiguration.

As European societies become more diverse, higher education institutions face the challenge of ensuring equitable access for students with migrant backgrounds. Italian universities have recently experienced an increase in the number of students with migrant backgrounds, although this figure remains proportionally low compared to its potential. While research has focused on compulsory schooling, less attention has been paid to the university level. This paper presents preliminary findings collected within the FINE project (https://fineproject.it), which investigates the socio-economic and cultural factors that either foster or limit the tertiary educational pathways of students with migrant backgrounds in Italy. The project adopted a mixed-method approach, combining a survey targeting all students at the University of Milano-Bicocca (including about 2500 students with migrant backgrounds) with 50 in-depth interviews from the same university. The quantitative analysis enlightens the distinctive socio-economic characteristics of students with migrant backgrounds and related disadvantages in academic performance. The qualitative analysis shows that the educational path is often non-linear and arduous due to economic and social obstacles, as well as cultural aspects relating to how individuals manage their identities and sense of belonging. The decision-making process relating to educational choices appears to occur in isolation, with different influence of parents, siblings, teachers and peers. A desire for social redemption, as well as a wish to expand one's knowledge and secure a good job, emerges as motivations to enroll at university. The university is seen as a freer environment than school in terms of how studies are organized, offering greater anonymity, which potentially neutralises bias and prejudice, and opportunities to participate in socio-political activities. In some cases, university becomes a symbolic space where identity can be fully expressed. During the interviews, the students suggested actions to foster access, such as providing economic and bureaucratic support, improving access to information and accountability, improving communication with students, and providing training for secondary school teachers on inclusion issues.

The large-scale expansion of student enrolment has contributed to increasing diversity within the student population. This analysis aims to investigate how differences in students’ backgrounds shape their everyday university experiences by focusing on housing patterns, a topic that has attracted significant debate in the Italian context in recent years. Housing, as an essential infrastructure of daily life, an enabling node for the exercise of other rights, and at the same time a constitutive element of a city’s (and university’s) ability to be inclusive (Bricocoli & Peverini, 2023) - plays a central role.

Difficulties in accessing the housing market are particularly evident for students with a migratory background, who face a combination of different forms of vulnerability. The housing experience of students of foreign origin is indeed at risk of being marked by heightened exposure to the so-called “malpractices” of the rental market (Frangioni & Costa, 2024), as well as outright discriminatory and stigmatizing practices that limit access for those who do not embody the profile of the “ideal tenant” (Costarelli et al., 2021). This partly explains the greater reliance of international students, compared to their Italian peers, on the solutions offered by private student residences (PBSA): in the absence of a local support network or university-provided services, and in order to avoid scams found in advertisements and online listings, renting housing in private residences can almost be considered an obligation rather than a choice, despite the higher associated costs (Gainsforth, 2022). However, international students are not a socially homogeneous group: they often come from middle-class families in contexts with lower purchasing power than in Europe (Lipura & Collins, 2020).

These difficulties therefore strongly influence students’ housing experiences, often translating into higher levels of dissatisfaction, greater forced mobility, higher rental costs, and a more frequent desire to move. In other words, the power asymmetries that characterize the field of student housing appear even more pronounced for students of foreign origin, who are required to adopt strategies of adaptation and negotiation within contexts that reflect longstanding patterns of inequality in access to housing (Fang & van Liempt, 2021).

To investigate the main housing patterns of off-site university students with a migratory background, attention will be focused on a case study: the University of Bologna. Drawing on findings from an online survey conducted within the project LINUS – Living the University City – during the 2024/25 academic year, several dimensions of interest will be examined, including the main characteristics of housing arrangements, the methods and timing of the housing search, the difficulties and discriminatory practices encountered, the costs incurred, and overall satisfaction with one’s housing situation.

Understanding the differences that characterize the housing experiences of international and foreign students, and comparing these with the experiences of Italian students, is extremely useful for grasping the forms of student agency exercised within a housing market deeply shaped by the distortive effects of rising residential values, characterized by stringent structural constraints, in which the public sector continues to play a marginal role.

As the Italian second generation has expanded in recent years, research on the trajectories of university students with migrant backgrounds has increased accordingly. Yet empirical evidence remains fragmented and often focuses on single dimensions of the student experience. As Italian universities become increasingly diverse social environments, the lived experiences of these students offer an important vantage point from which to analyse integration pathways through educational aspirations, everyday practices, and the structural constraints that shape them.

While existing literature has examined educational inequalities (Heath & Brinbaum, 2007), structural barriers, and academic outcomes (Giudici et al., 2021; Gabrielli et al., 2022), more recent studies highlight the agency of students who succeed despite these hurdles (Santagati, 2019) and the resources they mobilise to overcome them (Bertozzi & Lagomarsino, 2019). However, less attention has been devoted to the emotional and relational costs associated with these trajectories. Although university enrolment is widely perceived as a pathway to socioeconomic mobility, it remains shaped by obstacles that are not solely material (Bozzetti, 2018).

This contribution explores how second-generation students experience university as a negotiation between intergenerational expectations, aspirations for emancipation, and obligations toward their families. Central to this process is the tension between the “immigrant optimism” (Kao & Tienda, 1995) reflected in parents’ expectations and students’ aspirations for professional recognition and self-realization, shaped by both explicit and implicit familial demands (Fuligni, 2001).

The study draws on qualitative fieldwork conducted in Rome based on 119 interviews: 14 focus groups involving 96 young people with migrant backgrounds, 17 semi-structured interviews with key informants, and 6 interviews with parents. This material reconstructs intergenerational dialogues around future expectations, often suspended between the imperative to complete higher education and the need to enter the labour market.

Findings show that university choices are often shaped less by personal interests than by a perceived moral obligation toward the family. Many participants describe a responsibility to “repay” their parents’ sacrifices, steering them toward secure or prestigious fields despite diverging personal aspirations. These dynamics are reinforced by hierarchical family expectations that generate tensions between vocational aspirations and pressure to pursue “safe” academic pathways.

Such tensions are further intensified by the role reversal frequently experienced by second-generation youths, who often act as cultural and bureaucratic mediators for their parents. Embedded in a broader moral economy of reciprocity and obligation, this experience contributes to a strong drive for financial independence, with many interviewees self-funding their university studies.

Finally, dissatisfaction with the Italian labour market – widely perceived as lacking meritocracy and professional recognition – leads many respondents to express the desire to migrate after completing their studies. Paradoxically, the university experience often provides the cultural capital that enables this outward mobility (Della Puppa, 2018; Ricucci, 2022).

By unpacking these tensions, this contribution argues that for second-generation students the university becomes a pivotal arena where integration is negotiated not only through academic achievement but through the complex reconciliation of identity, family expectations, and aspirations for social recognition.