The degree of ethnic educational inequality varies across countries, as international educational surveys have shown. Previous studies suggest that institutional and societal characteristics of destination countries partly account for this variance. The article builds upon these recent findings and upon hypotheses with regard to the relationship between welfare states and immigration and integration processes. It is assumed that two different societal dimensions, namely egality and diversity of the destination countries structure educational decisions of immigrants. Thus, at least partly, the individual control has its educational success revoked. This is why this article speaks of a process of cognitive exclusion. With data from PISA 2003 and 2006 we examine the effects of welfare state institutions and diversity of host countries on individual educational success by applying multilevel regressions. The results show that strong welfare states reduce the individual risk of cognitive exclusion, contradicting common "moral hazard" assumptions. © 2011 VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften Résumé.

International comparison immigrants Multilevel analyses Integration Welfare states Educational inequality

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