Young Immigrants in the Danish School System
The importance of a social and cultural network for school performance

A major quantitative study based on PISA data for the year 2000 shows that cultural communication in the home is vital for young peoples’ academic performance at school, i.e. whether the family talk about culture and politics as well as books and films.

The present study is a small qualitative investigation based on interviews with 13 young immigrants aged 14-16 in a school where half the pupils originate from non-Western countries and where it was desired to study the connection between pupils’ social networks and their academic performance. This particularly applied to the importance of Danish friends in their network.