In previous posts, I explored the PISA performance of immigrant and native pupils across several European countries, including those in the Balkans. Briefly, in Serbia, Montenegro, and Croatia, immigrant students do not experience significant disadvantages in academic achievement or socioeconomic status (SES) compared to their native peers. This contrasts with many developed European countries with larger immigrant populations, such as France and Austria, where the native-immigrant gap is more pronounced.
One might assume that a higher proportion of immigrants in a country leads to a greater native-immigrant gap in education. However, this is not necessarily true—at least for the selected countries in my analysis. For instance, Greece and Slovenia have much lower immigrant populations than Austria and France, yet they exhibit a considerable native-immigrant achievement gap. From this perspective, the situation in the Balkans appears unique.
But what about well-being? Do immigrant pupils differ from their native peers in terms of their sense of safety, stress levels, confidence, or experiences with bullying? Let’s take a look.
Just a disclaimer: This analysis is purely exploratory. I am not testing any specific hypotheses, building theories, or discussing potential causes and predictors.
Sense of Belonging to School
PISA 2018 and 2022 surveys include numerous questions related to student emotions, motivation, and well-being. For this post, I focus on a few key indicators. The first is the Index of Sense of Belonging to School, which reflects how comfortable and connected students feel in their school environment. The index is designed to be comparable across 2018 and 2022, allowing us to analyze both overall trends and changes in the native-immigrant gap.
So, we can not only compare changes the average level of this index since 2018 but to estimate if native-immigrants gap change. Below you may see the level of index “Belonging to School” for native and immigrants pupils in different countries in 2018 and 2022 years (under control of socioeconomic status and gender).
The data reveal that, in most selected countries, the sense of belonging increased between 2018 and 2022, with this trend being particularly evident in the Balkans. However, large differences between native and first-generation immigrant pupils persisted in Montenegro and Serbia—similar to Austria.
When comparing the native-immigrant gap across both years, Montenegro, Serbia, Austria, and Italy had the largest disparities in 2018. By 2022, the same countries remained in this "anti-ranking," but Austria demonstrated a significant increase in its gap. Interestingly, second-generation immigrants reported a significantly lower sense of belonging compared to natives in Italy only. In contrast, in France and the UK, second-generation immigrants actually reported a higher sense of belonging than their native peers.
Experiences with Bullying
Next, I examined the Index of Being Bullied, where higher values indicate a greater frequency of bullying experiences. Like the index “Belonging to school”, this measure is designed for comparison between 2018 and 2022, despite changes in the questionnaire structure (three items in 2018 vs. nine in 2022).
The overall level of bullying decreased across all selected countries between 2018 and 2022. However, the native-immigrant gap actually widened in 2022, particularly for first-generation immigrants.
In 2018, first-generation immigrant pupils reported experiencing bullying more frequently than native students in five countries: France, Greece, Croatia, Italy and Montenegro. By 2022, this trend persisted in these countries and expanded to include Austria. However, the degree of the gap varied—Croatia saw a narrowing of the difference, while Montenegro experienced an increase. Additionally, in both Italy and Montenegro, second-generation immigrants reported significantly more bullying than native students.
A few interesting country-specific patterns emerged. In the UK, the overall level of bullying was already high in 2018, but native students actually experienced it more frequently than immigrants. Meanwhile, in Slovenia (2022), second-generation immigrants reported more frequent bullying than first-generation immigrants—an unusual reversal of trends observed in other countries.
Key Takeaways
To summarize, immigrant pupils in Serbia, Croatia, and Montenegro do not seem to face disadvantages in academic achievement or socioeconomic status compared to their native peers. However, when it comes to emotional well-being, they may encounter significant challenges. In these three Balkan countries, immigrant students—particularly first-generation immigrants—report feeling less safe at school (as discussed in a previous post), experiencing lower levels of school belonging, and facing higher levels of bullying than native students.
The reasons behind these disparities remain unclear. Previous studies have often linked immigrant disadvantages to low language proficiency, yet this explanation does not apply to the Balkans, where most immigrants speak the same language as natives. It is possible that the root of these challenges lies in historical and cultural factors specific to these societies, but this is a complex issue—one that goes beyond my expertise.
As an immigrant in Serbia with three children in the Serbian school system, my personal experience has been that Serbia is an open and welcoming country with a tolerant attitude toward immigrants—at least toward Russian immigrants. However, my personal perspective is limited, and I lack the data to see the broader picture. On a related note, I previously discussed with Serbian researchers the possibility of conducting a study on newly arrived immigrants in Serbia. Unfortunately, the project was put on hold for various reasons, but I hope to explore the topic of immigrant adaptation in Serbia in the near future.
These findings raise important questions about immigrant students in the Balkans. While they may perform academically on par with their native peers, their emotional experiences at school tell a different story—one that deserves further research and attention.
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