Doctoral Dissertation Research: College and Community Cultures and Upwardly-Mobile of Mexican-Origin Students

University Of California-Irvine, Irvine CA

Investigators

Abstract

For students from low-income and working-class backgrounds, the process of upward mobility involves adopting perspectives or developing practices that contrast with the perspectives and practices of their communities of origin. The objective of this study is to understand how college, family and community cultures interact to shape the experience of students as they transition to college. What role do students' racial/ethnic and community cultures play as they assimilate into the college and university culture and the middle-class? The methodology includes interviews with approximately 60 college students and observations of eight students, all of whom grew up in the same Mexican-American, working-class community. The interviews and observations will compare students who attend a moderately selective school with students who attend a less selective school. This study advances research surrounding the role that the university plays in reducing inequality. Given the rapid expansion of higher education and its greater accessibility to students from working-class backgrounds, this project examines whether what it means to belong to the middle-class differs across university contexts and the extent to which existing social class hierarchies are reproduced. Moreover, whether student engagement with their communities of origin varies across university selectivity also carries important implications as it relates to policies surrounding academic and student life on college campuses. Previous research finds that unlike their middle-class peers, working-class college students struggle to reconcile forms of speech, habits and practices associated with both their middle-class and working-class cultures. Previous research, however, has concentrated on the upwardly mobile college experiences of students attending elite or selective universities and, with few exceptions, has not generally assessed how culture rooted in students? racial-ethnic identity contributes to their assimilation into the middle class. This study draws on Bourdieu and colleagues? concept of habitus to understand how university, family and community culture influence Mexican-origin students' class habitus. Using semi-structured interviews and participant observation, this study takes a comparative assessment of the experiences of students from one working-class community who attended a moderately selective, flagship institution and students from the same community who attended a less competitive, local university. The lead researcher examines the role that race plays in mediating the way in which the university influences students? development of a middle-class habitus as well as whether university culture varies based on school selectivity and/or community contexts. The project pushes theoretical debates to move beyond assumptions that the middle-class culture of the university remains static across school selectivity and community contexts and to consider that understandings of what it means to belong to the middle-class likely vary across social contexts as well. Because this study also examines how university cultures help students build or break ties with their home communities, it carries important policy implications as it relates to how colleges structure academic curriculums and important aspects of campus and student life.