Meanings of Mobility: Family, Education, and Immigration in the Lives of Latino Youth

Synopsis

Over the past twenty years, elite colleges and universities have enacted policies that have reshaped the racial and class composition of their campuses, and over the past decade, Latinos’ college attendance has notably increased. While discussions on educational mobility focus on its perceived benefits – that it will ultimately lead to social and economic mobility – less attention is paid to the process of “making it” and the challenges low-income youth experience when navigating these elite spaces. In Meanings of Mobility, sociologist Leah C. Schmalzbauer explores the experiences of low-income Latino youth attending highly selective, elite colleges. To better understand these experiences, Schmalzbauer draws on interviews with 60 low-income Latino youth who graduated or were set to graduate from Amherst College, one of the most selective private colleges in the United States. The vast majority of these students were the first in their immigrant families to go to college in the U.S. She finds that while most of the students believed attending Amherst provided them with previously unimaginable opportunities, adjusting to life on campus came with significant challenges, both to the new physical and social environments. Many of the students Schmalzbauer spoke with had difficulties adapting to the new cultural norms at Amherst as well as relating to their non-Latino, non-low-income peers. The challenges these students faced were not limited to life on campus. As they attempted to adapt to Amherst, they felt gaps form between themselves and the family and friends they left behind who could not understand the new hardships they were facing. The students credited their elite education for access to extraordinary educational and employment opportunities. However, their experiences while at Amherst and afterward revealed that the relationship between educational and social mobility is much more complicated and less secure than popular conversations about the “American Dream” suggest. They found that their educational attainment was not enough to erase the core challenges of growing up in a marginalized immigrant family: many were still poor, faced racism, and those who were undocumented or had undocumented family members still feared deportation. Schmalzbeauer provides several suggestions to elite institutions to better support low-income Latino students and lower the emotional price of educational mobility. These suggestions include creating immigration offices on campus that develop programming and supports for undocumented students and undocumented family members. She also recommends educating staff to better understand the centrality of family for these students and the challenges they face, so staff will be able to provide appropriate support and advice. Additionally, she suggests incentivizing more privileged students to take courses to better understand inequality and the experiences of their marginalized peers. Meanings of Mobility provides compelling insights into the lesser-studied difficulties faced by low-income Latinos pursuing educational and social mobility.

Copyright:

2023

Book Details

Book Quality:

Publisher Quality

Book Size:

242 Pages

ISBN-13:

9780871548009

Publisher:

Russell Sage Foundation

Date of Addition:

07/18/23

Copyrighted By:

Russell Sage Foundation

Adult content:

No

Language:

English

Has Image Descriptions:

No

Categories:

Nonfiction, Social Studies, Sociology

Submitted By:

Bookshare Staff

Usage Restrictions:

This is a copyrighted book.