Abstract

This article examines the school trajectories of migrant children who were born abroad and arrived in France before reaching adulthood. While other studies focus mainly on local contexts, this study is based on data from the Teo survey at a national level. In the first part, we review key research findings on measures progressively introduced into the French education system to address the needs of migrant children, particularly non-French-speaking pupils. In the second part, we describe the data and methodology. We then present our results in two parts: first, we examine migrant children's trajectories according to their age at arrival in France; second, focusing on upper secondary tracks and levels of qualification, we estimate the effect of age and schooling in specific classes on subsequent trajectories. In the discussion and conclusion, our findings point to the existence of institutional discrimination, which severely penalizes the pupils concerned and undermines the founding principle of equality.