Research suggests that students with an immigrant background tend to be disproportionately streamed into vocational tracks, repeat more grades and score lower in standardised tests than their non-immigrant peers of similar social origins. However, the degree to which the internal diversity of immigrant students has been truly explored is questionable, with most studies considering only one national origin or treating immigrant students as an undifferentiated “whole”. Social origins are usually accounted for using a socioeconomic status index and/or parental educational levels. However, there has been a lack of analyses of how immigrant students and their families experience social class positioning in their host society, and how this impacts their school experiences and trajectories throughout compulsory education, in conjunction with other inequalities. In this paper, we apply a quantitative methodology by analysing an administrative microdata set on all students enrolled in Portuguese public schools in 2019/20. We compare the school pathways (number of grade repetitions and type of curriculum track chosen in upper secondary education) of students with an immigrant background (those with at least one parent born abroad) to their non-immigrant counterparts, controlling for national origin, generational status, type of ancestry (single or mixed), parental education, social class (*), and gender. We find significant differences among immigrant students regarding how social class impacts their school pathways, showing the need for further research on social positioning inequalities to better understand patterns of school integration and institutional discrimination. *see Carmo & Nunes (2012). Class and social capital in Europe. European Societies, 15(3).

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