Information gathering prior to choosing a high school in Montreal : Immigrant parents between feelings of inadequacy, reconfiguration of their academic and social capital, and inequalities


Véronique Grenier, Université du Québec à Montréal

For parents, choosing a school requires having information about different schools, laws and legislation governing admission, and local school market dynamics, as well as being able to evaluate this information and make a decision based on their assessment (van Zanten, 2009). Studies of parents’ information gathering work, i.e. the process of finding and evaluating information, have focused primarily on the effects of parents’ social class. (Ball, 2003; Fong, 2019; Wright-Costello and Phillippo, 2020). Thus, it is important to examine the effects of other characteristics on information gathering, particularly that of being an immigrant parent. First, the migratory process involves being displaced which, at least temporarily, affects a person’s capital, including capital useful for obtaining information and choosing a school, i.e. academic capital and social capital (Byrne and De Tona, 2012). Second, it creates a particular relationship to the host society and its institutions, including its education system (Adams and Kirova, 2011; Charette, 2016; Kanouté and Lafortune, 2010). However, thus far, little research has focused specifically on the work of gathering information used to choose a school by this category of parent (Byrne and De Tona, 2012; Weekes-Bernard, 2007). Given that it welcomes the majority of Quebec’s newcomers and due to its diversified, hierarchical school market, especially at the secondary level (Grenier, 2022; Hurteau and Duclos, 2017; Kamanzi, 2019), Montreal represents an appropriate urban context in which to explore this question. To this end, this communication analyzes immigrant parents’ experiences of gathering information to choose their children’s secondary school in Montreal. To do so, this communication uses data from a qualitative study of thirty immigrant parents’ experiences of choosing Francophone public or private high schools in Montreal. To explore parents’ experiences of information gathering, semi-directed interviews designed to collect retrospective accounts of choosing their children’s high school were analyzed. Analysis of empirical data was performed through an approach centered on actors and their experiences and the application of Bourdieu’s (1979, 1980) concepts of cultural capital and social capital. The analytical framework also considers the effect of the migratory process on a person’s capital and their relationship to the host society’s institutions, including its educational system (Byrne and De Tona, 2012). Furthermore, particular attention is paid to practices used by schools and school staff to disseminate information and support parents. Therefore, this communication explores, on one hand, the experiences, challenges, and specific needs of immigrant parents as they gather information and, on the other, their agency and proactiveness to mitigate feelings of ignorance, lack of referents, and urgency by leveraging their skills, advantages, or privileges. It also examines similarities in participants’ common experience of choosing their children’s school in another country and variations explained by reconfigured academic and/or social capital and differential pathways in the host society. It also points out inequalities in accessing information depending on the type of primary school attended by the children, especially in relation to the three-tiered hierarchical school system (regular public, enriched public and private schools). By focusing on a seldom-studied category in information gathering work, this article sheds light on experiences as yet rarely explored.

This paper will be presented at the following session: