School failure among descendents of immigrants in Catalonia: more than just another assignment

The descendants of international immigrants and their social integration must be among the priority focuses in the construction of social cohesion. However, the available statistical data are scanty, fragmentary, and clearly insufficient. In this issue of Perspectives Demogràfiques we present the demographic profile of descendants of immigrants, their relationship with immigration, their diversity, territorial distribution, and school performance as a tool for combatting inequality and discrimination in a population group which, in future, could come to represent a quarter of the young people residing in Catalonia. The data presented here have been provided by research carried out by the Secretariat for Equality, Migrations and Citizenship and published in the report “Resultats escolars, migració i territori. Catalunya, 2011-2016” (School Results, Migration and Territory: Catalonia, 2011 – 2016). They were made possible thanks to the link-up between data from the Department of Education of the Generalitat (Government) of Catalonia for students in the 2015-2016 academic year and the Population Statistics Register of the Statistical Institute of Catalonia (IDESCAT).