Aiming too high or scoring too low? Heterogeneous ethnic gaps in upper secondary enrollment and outcomes beyond the transition in France

The children of immigrants tend to make more ambitious enrolment choices than native students after controlling for their lower social status and prior academic achievement. Few studies have explored heterogeneity in these ethnic choice effects by both social origin and previous achievement simultaneously, so it is unclear whether results are driven by specific immigrant-native comparisons. Moreover, most research does not investigate outcomes after the educational transition, so the long-term consequences of these educational choices remain unclear. Using French panel data from the 1995 and 2007 rounds of the Panel d'Élèves du Second Degré and focusing on the children of immigrants from Africa and Turkey, I investigate immigrant-native gaps in the decision to enrol in academic upper secondary education and in outcomes after the transition. I find evidence of positive ethnic choice effects. However, I also find that they were substantial only when comparing the most disadvantaged immigrant-origin and native students (low-performing and lower class students). After the transition, immigrant-origin students were more likely to be retained, less likely to further transition to the most prestigious track and less likely to complete a track leading to tertiary education. Analyses using counterfactual reweighting suggest that large portions of these gaps were explained by positive ethnic choice effects and by the long-term impacts of immigrant-native gaps in prior academic achievement. My findings indicate that ethnic choice effects are prevalent among academically fragile students and that policy should aim to close early gaps in academic achievement to limit their persistent effects over time.