This chapter provides background information about the ten Western countries under study, starting with a description of the size of the second-generation groups in the ten countries and the major migration flows to these destinations. We also present indicators of the extent to which their parents (the primary migrants) were positively or negatively selected since selectivity is a major influence on second-generation educational outcomes. We then describe the selected countries’ educational systems to provide the background against which the different educational outcomes are analysed in the subsequent chapters. Finally, to capture differences in the integration climates which immigrants encounter, we describe how the ten Western countries under study differ in their scores with respect to multicultural policies. The aim of this overview is to provide readers with the necessary information to evaluate the findings given in the empirical chapters, and compare both the different minority groups and the destination countries.