School Segregation and School-Home Proximity among Immigrant-Origin Youths: A Case Study in Bologna, Italy

School segregation affecting immigrant-origin students depends on residential segregation but also exists as a separate phenomenon, determined by differences in families’ school choices, in turn reflected in distances between residence and attended schools. Socially disadvantaged students are more likely to attend the nearest school to their home and respect schools’ suggested catchment areas, since school selection depends more on convenience rather than on an evaluation of multiple schools’ pros and cons in a medium/long-term perspective, thus engendering potential educational inequality. This paper explores home-school proximity among students attending lower secondary schools in a major city in Northern Italy (Bologna) and identifies both student/family and school characteristics associated with such proximity differences. After having implemented a geolocation procedure to a data-base supplied by the Italian National Institute for the Evaluation of the Educational System for Schooling and Training (INVALSI) as well as a student-school matching procedure in light of schools’ official catchment basins, we examine the characteristics of students who attend close-to-home vs. distant schools and catchment-mandated vs. other schools as a function of factors including neighbourhood of residence, migration status, socio-economic status, and parental education. Schools are also classified according to the degree with which they exert differential attraction or repulsion among students originating from more vs. less privileged families.