Moving from the South of Italy: The parental role on student mobility for tertiary education

This article examines how differently the family background affects the choice of sons and daughters to move to another region for tertiary education and how the mother’s role on student mobility differs from that of the father. We apply multinomial logistic regression models to longitudinal data on high school-university transition regarding southern students enrolled at university in Italy. We treat missing data for parental educational and occupational variables using multiple imputation combined with inverse probability weighting. In light of a re-examination of the concept of dominance, the results are an interplay amongst parental education and occupation, parental and descendant gender, and geographical mobility trajectories. The findings highlight that a linear order of dominance exists on student mobility from the South to the northern regions, which is associated to the parents with high education level and in the highest positions in the occupational hierarchy. Nonlinear dominance in some cases may emerge, because disadvantaged parents invest in student mobility to allow to the descendants to better their social position with respect to their parents. Mothers are more dominant on daughters’ mobility for the universities in the South or Centre of Italy. Self-employed parents matter for the sons, if they are South to Centre movers.