The scientific debate on the integration processes of ethnic minorities over the years has become ever deeper and wider. A common acknowledgment has emerged from this debate of the role of education as a valid strategy to unfold such processes. The school experience of young migrants or the young of immigrant origin develops itself along trajectories differentiated from those of natives. The migratory event and the status of ethnic minority give shape to the educative destinies of youth emphasizing or arranging particularly with class effect. However, a third factor, related to gender, enters this relation determining more outstanding differences than those traditionally evidenced in the school population as a whole that sees female students get the better over male classmates. The analyses of educational history of the young migrants has often been “gender blind”; the purpose of this paper is to analyse international research to find the elements connected both to the ethnicity and to the gender differences that lead towards this differentiated frame, analysing the results of some research realised on Ecuadorian boys and girls studying in Genoese high schools.

Key-words: gender, school achievement, second generation, social capital, ethnic social capital