Abstract
In the context of US higher education, the collective advancement of low-income youth, especially youth of color, has been limited. Latinxs are faring the worst, with the lowest college graduation rates when compared to Blacks, whites and Asian Americans. Yet, while collective mobility stagnates a growing number of Latinx youth are finding their way into elite colleges and universities. In this paper, we draw from life history interviews and focus groups to explore the mobility pathways of low-income Latinx youth who have achieved admission into a highly selective college. We pay special attention to how Latinx youth are experiencing educational mobility as members of socially marginalized families and communities. Our findings highlight the importance of three overlapping networks - family networks, local school and community networks, and elite recruitment networks- to students’ ability to achieve mobility into education’s upper echelons. We argue that place shapes both network access and the meaning educational mobility has in youths’ lives.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Abrego, Leisy. 2019. Relational legal consciousness of U.S. citizenship: privilege, responsibility, guilt, and love in latinx mixed-status families. Law & Society Review 53 (3): 641–670.
Ahmed, Sara. 2012. On being included: racism and diversity in institutional life. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Aries, Elizabeth. 2013. Speaking of race and class: the student experience at an elite college. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
Benson, Janel, and Elizabeth M. Lee. 2020. Geographies of campus inequality: mapping the experiences of first-generation students. New York: Oxford University Press.
Bickham, and Mendez. 2018. Jennifer and Leah Schmalzbauer. Latino youth and struggles for inclusion in the 21st century. Ethnicities 18 (2): 165-177
Bruhn, Sarah and Roberto Gonzales. Forthcoming. Geographies of belonging: Migrant youth and relational, community and national opportunities for inclusion. Social Sciences.
Carnevale, Anthony P., and Megan L. Fasules. 2017. Latinx education and economic progress: running faster but still behind. Washington D.C.: Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce.
Chetty, Raj, John N. Friedman, and Emmanuel Saez, Nicholas Turner and Danny Yagan. 2017. Mobility report cards: The role of colleges in intergenerational mobility. NBER Working Paper No. 23618. Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research.
Dhingra, Pawan. 2020. Hyper education: why good schools, good grades and good behavior are not enough. New York: New York University Press.
Dreby, Joanna. 2010. Divided by borders: mexican migrants and their children. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Dominguez, Silvia. 2011. Getting ahead: social mobility, public housing and immigrant networks. New York: New York University Press.
Dominguez, Silvia and Celeste Watkins. 2003. Creating networks for survival and mobility: examining social capital amongst low-income african american and latin american mothers. Social Problems 50 (1): 111–135.
Flores, Andrea. 2021. The succeeders: how immigrant youth are transforming what it means to belong in America. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Goldrick-Rab, Sara. 2016. Paying the price: College costs, financial aid and the betrayal of the american dream. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Gonzales, Roberto. 2016. Lives in limbo: undocumented and coming of age in America. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Gonzales, Roberto and Edelina Burciaga. 2018. Segmented pathways of illegality: reconciling the coexistence of master and auxiliary statuses in the experiences of 1.5 generation undocumented young adults. Ethnicities 18 (2): 178–191.
Greder, Kimberly and Jordan Arellanes. 2018. Investing in future generations: realities and goals of latino immigrant families. Diálogo 21 (1): 89–100.
Hoxby, Caroline and Christopher Avery. 2012. The missing ‘one-offs’: The hidden supply of high-achieving, low income students. Working Paper 18586. Cambridge, MA. National Bureau of Economic Research.
Jack, Anthony Abraham. 2019. The privileged poor: how Amherst colleges are failing disadvantaged students. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Kao, Grace, Elizabeth Vaquero and Kimberly Goyette. 2013. Education and immigration. Cambridge, UK: Polity.
Kasinitz Philip, John, and Mary Mollenkopf, Waters and Jennifer Holdaway. 2009. Inheriting the city: the children of immigrants come of age. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
Lee, Elizabeth M. 2016. Class and campus life: managing and experiencing inequality at an elite college. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Lee, Jennifer, and Min Zhou. 2015. The asian american achievement paradox. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
Lemann, Nicholas. 1999. The big test: the secret history of the american meritocracy. New York: Farrar, Strauss and Grioux.
Lopez, Rick. 2020. Creating a place for Latinidad at an elite liberal arts college: Latinx student activism at Amherst College, 1970s through 1980s (and today). In Amherst in the world. Amherst, MA: Amherst College Press.
Louie, Vivian. 2012. Keeping the immigrant bargain: the costs and rewards of success in America. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
Martinez, Lisa M. and Maria Del Carmen Salazar. 2018. The bright lights: the development of oppositional consciousness among DACAmented latino youth. Ethnicities 18 (2): 242–259.
Mattern, Krista and Jeff Wyatt. 2009. Student choice of college: how far do students go for an education? Journal of College Admission 203: 18–29.
Menjívar, Cecilia. 2000. Fragmented ties: salvadoran immigrant networks in America. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Pan, Yung-Yi, and Diana and Daisy Verduzco Reyes. 2021. The norm among the exceptional? Experiences of latinx students in elite institutions. Sociological Inquiry 91 (1): 207–230.
Rendón, Maria. 2019. Stagnant dreamers: how the inner-city shapes the integration of the second generation. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
Reyes, Daisy Verduzco. 2018. Learning to be latinx: how colleges shape identity politics. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Sassen, Saskia. 2008. Two stops in today’s new global geographies: shaping novel labor supplies and employment regimes. American behavioral scientist 52: 457–496.
Schmalzbauer, Leah. 2014. The last best place? Gender, family and migration in the new west. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Schmalzbauer, Leah and Alelí Andrés. 2019. Stratified lives: family, illegality and the rise of a new educational elite. Harvard educational review 89: 635–660.
Smith, Robert. 2008. Horatio Algiers lives in Brooklyn: extra-family support, intra-family dynamics, and socially neutral operating identities in exceptional mobility of mexican immigrants. ANNALS of the American academy of political and social science 620: 270–290.
Smith, Robert. 2006. Mexican New York: transnational lives of new immigrants. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Suarez-Orozco, Carola and Marcelo Suarez-Orozco. 1995. Transformations: Immigration, family life and achievement motivation among Latinx adolescents. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Torpey, Elka. 2018. Measuring the value of education. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Vazquez, Jessica. 2011. Mexican Americans across generations: immigrant families, racial realities. New York: New York University Press.
Warikoo, Natasha. 2016. The diversity bargain: and other dilemmas of race, admissions, and meritocracy at Amherst universities. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Yoshikawa, Hirokazu. 2011. Immigrants raising citizens: Undocumented parents and their young children. New York: Russell Sage Foundation
Zambrano, Ruth, and Sylvia Hurtado. 2015. The magic key: the educational journeys of Mexican Americans from k-12 to college and beyond. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.
Zhou, Min, and Carl L. Bankston III. 2016. The rise of the new second generation. Cambridge, UK: Polity.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the youth and parents who shared their life histories with us for this project. We would also like to thank Joanna Dreby for her feedback on an earlier draft of this article, and the anonymous reviewers from Qualitative Sociology for their helpful comments and suggestions.
Funding
This research was funded by a Russell Sage Foundation Presidential Grant G-2005-23985, the Amherst College Faculty Research Award Program, and the Gregory S. Call Student Intern Program at Amherst College.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher’s Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
Schmalzbauer, L., Rodriguez, M. Pathways to Mobility: Family and Education in the Lives of Latinx Youth. Qual Sociol 46, 21–46 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11133-022-09523-5
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11133-022-09523-5