Females and immigrants are treated as “disadvantaged groups” in traditional social stratification studies. However, more and more evidences have shown dramatic resiliency of these two groups. Scholars observe the emergence of a new gender achievement gap favoring girls, as well as better educational outcomes of children with immigrant background. Despite mounting interests in these seemingly contradictions, little have been done on investigating the causal mechanisms behind. Taking Hong Kong as the research background, a focus is put on the academic achievement of secondary-school students, whereby I try to resolve two problems: first, why there is a trend of boys’ lagging behind girls in academic achievement? Second, what can explain immigrants’ unexpected success in education...[ Read more ]

Females and immigrants are treated as “disadvantaged groups” in traditional social stratification studies. However, more and more evidences have shown dramatic resiliency of these two groups. Scholars observe the emergence of a new gender achievement gap favoring girls, as well as better educational outcomes of children with immigrant background. Despite mounting interests in these seemingly contradictions, little have been done on investigating the causal mechanisms behind. Taking Hong Kong as the research background, a focus is put on the academic achievement of secondary-school students, whereby I try to resolve two problems: first, why there is a trend of boys’ lagging behind girls in academic achievement? Second, what can explain immigrants’ unexpected success in education? Major conclusions are: (1) the policy shift favoring equal educational opportunity denotes boys’ losing protection in school allocation which consequently causes their academic disadvantages against girls; (2) students’ aspirations and motivations are important mediators linking immigrant status and academic achievement, but larger portion of the immigrant effect is mediated by factors in families with higher socioeconomic status.