When one analyses the influence of social identity on scholastic effort, ethnic identity largely contributes to determine it.
This aspect contributes to reduce scholastic effort, which further decreases in presence of a higher level of perceived discrimination.
How such interaction may lead to different levels of scholastic effort emerges from the results in Section 5.
Second, it is analysed how the interplay between the adaptation to host societies and the influence of home country cultures determines children's scholastic effort.
This recalls the approach of Fordham and Ogbu (1986), who show that perceived discrimination determines children's development of an oppositional identity and undermines their scholastic effort.
This aspect can be worsened by a low academic standard, which may reflect the poor socio-economic status of segregated schools with very low expectations of teachers on students' attainments; the effect is a further reduction in scholastic effort.
The present model partly draws on the contribution of Akerlof and Kranton (2002) and of Autiero (2015); Autiero and O'Higgins (2016) in analysing the influence of social identity and the locus of control on scholastic effort; nevertheless, we take into consideration ethnic identity with its multidimensionality as a specific aspect of social identity.
We also consider personal identity; it is individuated by the locus of control, L i, which is relevant to scholastic effort in as much as individuals with a sense of competence about their abilities and a stronger feeling of control of success and failure in pursuing their own personal goals are likely to be more motivated in school.
As to parental acculturation orientations—I ki —it is important to specify that in a family where parents transmit values strongly oriented towards adaptation through education, their children derive greater utility from scholastic effort; thereby, they meet parental expectations for their behaviour in school.
How ethnic identity triggers children's scholastic effort is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon, which entails the interaction among the influence of several factors such as parents and ethnic communities, the specificity of ethnic culture and children's attachment to it, their internal attitudes and perceived discrimination and finally schools' academic standard.
