Negative selectivity of Europe’s guest-worker immigration?

The aim of this paper is to empirically test the negative selectivity hypothesis as an explanation of the lower educational achievements of Turkish immigrant pupils. We do this by comparing educational achievement Turkish immigrant pupils in various European countries with the educational achievement of Turks at home, using the PISA 2006 data. Our analysis supports the thesis that the Turkish immigrants were negatively selected from their native population. The average score of Turkish immigrant pupils is substantially lower than the science score of comparable native pupils in Turkey. However, the result also show that the negative selectivity of Turkish immigrants can not by explained by the ‘guest-workers’ programs, because the largest negative science scores relative to the scores of the native pupils in the country of origin are found among the Italian first and second generation pupils, the Austrian first generation pupils, the French first generation immigrant pupils, and the German second generation pupils. A possible explanation is that all immigrants in Europe have more difficulties in establishing themselves and their children in comparison with immigrants in the traditional immigration countries, like the USA.