Mobilising parental capital for integration: new immigrant parents’ strategies to facilitate 1.5- and second-generation immigrant children’s academic and socio-cultural integration in Singapore
摘要
This article explores how new immigrant parents in Singapore deploy social, cultural, and economic capitals as strategies to support their 1.5- and second-generation children’s academic and socio-cultural integration. Based on in-depth interviews with 64 new immigrant parents from mainland China, India, the Philippines, Indonesia, and a few non-Asian countries, we identified foremost the distinct strategies parents employed to facilitate their children’s academic integration. Non-Chinese parents predominantly rely on bridging social capital, forming connections with local parents to navigate Singapore’s education system. In contrast, Chinese parents draw on bonding social capital derived from co-national networks, leveraging digital platforms like WeChat to exchange education-related resources. Beyond academics, immigrant parents also actively mobilise a variety of capitals—economic, social, and cultural—to support their children’s socio-cultural integration, whilst striking a balance between local integration with maintenance of socio-cultural connections with their homeland.