My American Dream

Abstract

This article presents findings of a qualitative, interpretive case study of the experiences of 1.5- and 2nd-generation West African immigrants who self-identify as pursuing the American Dream, defined by them as academic attainment and career success. Employing structuration theory, the authors examine the interplay between structures and agency in participants’ educational and professional decision making. Participants’ perspectives on the American Dream are filled with references to dominant narratives of hard work, economic success, and the power of formal education. At the same time, findings illuminate a conceptual shift in understanding the nature of hard work and personal freedom experienced in pursuit of the American Dream as participants recognized that as African immigrants, they had to work harder to achieve the Dream while highlighting the role and influence of family expectations and schooling structures. Their expanded notions of the Dream include understandings of individual agency, social supports and constraints, and cultural forces.

Keywords

African immigration American Dream immigrant education structuration

We may have different backgrounds, but we believe in the same dream that says this is a country where anything is possible. No matter who you are. No matter where you come from. That dream is why I can stand here before you tonight. That dream—that American Dream.

—President Barack Obama (2011)

The American Dream has been a familiar storyline to native-born Americans and immigrants, offering the promise of equal opportunity and success as a reward for hard work. But what does this dream mean? Do recent immigrants believe that everyone truly has equal opportunity? Do critiques of the American Dream, including the impenetrability of racism, expectations of conformity, and the reality that some people work harder for similar ends (Hochschild, 1995) exist for new immigrants? What does the American Dream mean for African immigrants, one of the largest segments of new immigrants to the United States?

Since the 1965 Immigration Act, Africans have come in increasing numbers, from 35,355 in 1960 to nearly 1.5 million in 2009 (McCabe, 2011). They are a diverse group of people, immigrating from many countries for different reasons, including family reunification, education, employment, and asylum (Awokoya, 2012; Davies, 2008). Varied experiences in home countries and reasons for immigrating may have a direct impact on their experiences in the United States. For example, among Nigerians, relatively high economic success may be attributed to pre-migration status as professionals; however, Ethiopians, many who come seeking asylum, arrive with fewer resources and years of schooling (Rong & Preissle, 2009). Regardless of reasons for immigrating or pre-migration status, African immigrants to the United States may be subject to racism that did not exist in home countries (Harushimana & Awokoya, 2011).

The purpose of this article is to examine the interplay of structure and agency in eighteen 1.5-¹ and 2nd-generation African immigrants’ perspectives on and experiences of the American Dream. We employ structuration theory (Giddens, 1984) to draw attention to the structures of schools, families, and society. We also look into how negotiations of these structures reveal participants’ successes and struggles. Achieving the Dream remains an aspiration for all participants, who referenced the power of education and hard work, alongside the goals of economic success and social mobility. At the same time, our findings illuminate a conceptual shift in understanding the nature of hard work and freedom experienced in its pursuit for African immigrants who highlight the role and influence of family expectations and schooling structures, and share complex understandings of agency in achieving the American Dream, demonstrated in their discussions of choosing college majors.

Immigrants, Structuration Theory, and Education

The ethos of the American Dream suggests that the United States is a place where the pursuit of “life, liberty and happiness” through hard work creates a pathway to success. Fundamentally, the American Dream offers hope for the minds, bodies, and spirits of all people within its borders. As a dominating ideology, it requires continuous research to uncover the complex ways this ethos is negotiated in the lives of people across cultural, economic, and social backgrounds. Even as immigrants adopt this ethos, structuration theory, situated in both agency and social structures, with attention to culture, demonstrates how they achieve, reshape, and transform the American Dream from the simplicity of a solitary and linear vision, to their American Dream, negotiated and nuanced to include understandings of individual agency, social supports and constraints, and cultural forces.

The American Dream and Agency

The American Dream focuses on many outcomes, most that highlight economic success and mobility. Others emphasize liberty, stability, and escape. Regardless, the focus is how agency—individuals’ abilities to make decisions or act on their own behalf—lead to the desired end. The outcome of the dominant story, economic success, begins with an impoverished individual who achieves social mobility through hard work, part of the early Western Protestant ethic (Hochschild, 1995). In this story, anyone can achieve success as the United States is a meritocracy. Merit, in this story, is embedded in the agency of the individual to “work hard.”

Much of the literature on immigrant experiences focuses on individual or families’ characteristics that affect educational success. For example, psychological factors such as initiative, motivation, and effort have been found to result in higher grades (Fuligni, 1997). Lopez’s (2001) study of five immigrant/migrant families in the Texas Rio Grande area demonstrated parents’ recurring message of hard work as the key to children’s academic success. Rong and Preissle (2009) identified factors that might lead to educational achievement among immigrant youth and concluded that success was likely due to factors such as family’s level of optimism. The belief that education can be attained through hard work and lead to social advancement was echoed by students who saw education as affording the capacity to fight social inequalities (S. J. Lee, 2005). Yet, Black immigrants’ optimism about United States is tempered by racist beliefs of American society (Foner, 2001; Perry, 2003) and negative schooling experiences (Roy & Roxas, 2011; Traoré, 2004). These experiences can lead to educational and societal disengagement.

Structural Understandings of Immigrant Experiences

Although agency is significant, a lack of contextual understandings denies the reality of immigrants’ experiences of structures that constrain their possibilities in pursuing the Dream, such as institutionalized racism (Ojo-Ade, 2001). Structural analyses of immigrant educational experiences, such as segmented assimilation theory, focus on cultural and societal elements in youths’ lives, arguing that student performance is a result of structures provided by families, cultures, and society (Peguero & Bondy, 2011; Rong & Preissle, 2009).

Generational differences in immigrant educational attainment are largely explained through a structural analysis of a family’s cultural heritage. Researchers have found that voluntary immigrants have a positive outlook toward education that correlates to achievement, in comparison with involuntary immigrants, such as descendants of enslaved Africans (Ogbu & Simons, 1998). This positive outlook is seen as a result of immigrants’ “dual frame of reference” (Blum, 2012), in which they compare experiences in their new country with what they believe their life would have been in their home country, making them more willing to accept less equitable treatment. This comparison is then reflected in their children’s higher academic performance (Kao & Tienda, 1995). For example, 1st- and 2nd-generation African youth had greater years of schooling as a result of parents’ socialization whereas later generations, lacking the dual frame of reference, have lower attainment (Rong & Brown, 2001).

In addition to cultural backgrounds, immigrants’ schooling is affected by varied structures, including tracking and class size (Conchas, 2001), racism and classism (McGinnis, 2009), and neo-racism—discrimination based on ideas about the superiority of cultures and countries of origin (J. J. Lee & Cantwell, 2011). African immigrants may experience discrimination related to their racial and ethnic backgrounds, and their status as individuals from a continent that some Americans view as inferior. Ojo-Ade (2001) argued that these forces can turn the American Dream into a “nightmare.”

Theories that emphasize societal structures and group characteristics are useful in considering how immigrant groups approach education; however, using these as sole factors that predetermine outcomes masks the complexities and heterogeneities within groups of immigrants. Structural analysis can create generalizations that are not true of all individuals.

Interplays of Structure and Agency in Immigrant Educational Experiences

Education is vital to the pursuit of the American Dream, in both the literature and the dominant discourse (Obama, 2011), and it is a social institution in which the interplay of agency and structure in immigrants’ lives can be made visible. Structuration theory offers a lens to reveal the heterogeneities within groups of immigrants, as it is an orienting theory that highlights this interplay (Giddens, 1984). Research on immigrant education has found that structures affect immigrant students’ ability to access and use resources, and in other ways enact agency (Wassell, Hawrylak, & LaVan, 2010). At the same time, there is internal diversity within cultural groups, in part because of their enactment of agency (Warikoo & Carter, 2009). Waters (1999) found that some Black immigrants identified racially as African American, whereas others identified ethnically as Afro-Caribbean—and that this choice had implications for academic achievement: Identifying as Afro-Caribbean was more likely to lead to greater academic success. Similarly, Abu El Haj (2007) found that Palestinian American youth took on varied identities, including Palestinian, Arab, and American Palestinian. These choices were made based on their understandings of how they were viewed in American society at large, the discrimination they faced from teachers, and familial, cultural, and religious expectations around conduct. Significantly, these choices influenced school behaviors, such as participation in school traditions and events. As both Waters’s and Abu El Haj’s studies show, immigrants from the same countries, living in the same areas, utilized their agency and cultural backgrounds to name their identities in ways that affected academic experiences. Individuals claim agency based on their knowledge of structures, which work as formal or informal rules that guide behavior, including societal norms, familial expectations, and economic forces (Eslinger, 2014; Giddens, 1984; Sewell, 1992).

Immigrant youth engage with structures in enacting agency (Giddens, 1984). They utilize structures such as guidance counseling and financial aid workshops, while at the same time they exist in cultural and familial structures that may require them to find a job instead of attending college to support their family, a result of economic forces. In a study of 117 Mexican immigrants, Hansen, Fisherkeller, and Johnson (1995) found that societal disadvantage and discrimination shaped students’ opportunities, while they noted that focusing on structures alone disregarded differences in students’ experiences—such as differences between brothers. Participants who did not graduate spoke both of discriminatory schooling structures and of how their understanding of their families’ experiences led them to leave high school.

While agency and structures are continuously in interplay, an additional element to Giddens’s (1984) theory is that structures themselves work as a duality. On one hand, structures are the medium of social practice. On the other hand, they are the outcomes of social practice. Structures do not merely exist as formal barriers to individuals, but their routine use become internalized so that socially constructed schema come to seem standard. For example, Valadez (2008), using structuration theory to examine the decision-making processes of 12 high-achieving Mexican immigrant students, found that youth relied on existing school rules and community expectations as they made decisions about attending college. Structures included access to guidance counselors and financial aid, as well as expectations around helping one’s family. These structures guided students’ agency as they made decisions around whether or not to apply or attend college, and which types of college. While many students were high-achieving and were predicted by school staff to be successful in college, the majority did not enroll in college, instead taking on working-class jobs. Thus, these students unintentionally reproduced social hierarchies that negatively affected Mexican immigrants. Addressing the interplay of structure and agency allows for the consideration of macro processes that influence individuals, such as globalization or economic restructuring, as well as decisions that individuals make that affect their lives (Aalbers, 2006).

In examining the perspectives of 18 African immigrant students in U.S. educational institutions, we use structuration theory with attention to culture. Specifically, we examine African immigrant understandings of the American Dream and how they might achieve it, especially in relation to getting to college and choosing a major. This enables us to explore their educational experiences and recognize structures, including social systems and cultural ways of being, that enable and/or constrain opportunities, ranging from societal racism to family expectations. We look to ways that students exhibit agency, demonstrating heterogeneities and complexities within African immigrant communities.

Method

We chose a qualitative, interpretive case study (Bogdan & Biklen, 2007) to explore 2nd- and 1.5-generation African immigrants’ educational experiences. This design is useful in exploring the meaning of experiences in participants’ words (Yin, 2003)—including understanding how African immigrants are making sense of the American Dream. Given the purpose and theoretical framework, research questions include the following:

Research Question 1: What messages about education do participants receive from family?

Research Question 2: How do participants describe educational experiences related to these messages?

Authors’ Positionalities

The authors come to this study with the understanding that research needs to center immigrants’ experiences and perspectives. One is African American, one is White, and one is of African, Native American, and European descent; all three are female, native-born, U.S. citizens. All have experience teaching and counseling K-16 students who emigrated from such countries as Nigeria, Mexico, and Japan. One researcher has conducted research with African immigrants in a study of college-going processes. Their teaching, counseling, research, and racialized experiences have influenced their understandings of the role of education in immigrants’ lives and the continued hope in the American Dream. For example, one of the authors found it difficult to understand the optimism that participants felt about the American Dream, whereas another, though personally skeptical that the American Dream was truly achievable, felt that for some, optimism is probably a necessary motivating factor, even when doubt exists. A third author believes that the American Dream looks different for different groups of people. Their variations in understandings of the Dream led to multiple conversations in which authors acknowledged their perspectives and continually returned to the data to ensure that participants’ understandings were represented in the interpretation and analysis, while helping to elicit the complexity of the American Dream for both the authors and the participants.

Participants

The participants for the 11-month case study consisted of a purposive sample based on 1.5- and 2nd-generation West African immigrants’ K-16 educational experiences (Bogdan & Biklen, 2007). One author and two graduate students recruited eighteen 2nd- and 1.5-generation West African immigrants who lived in New York, a major city for African immigrants (McCabe, 2011). Participants were recruited through personal contacts in educational institutions and community organizations, and a snowballing methodology (see Table 1).

Table 1.

Participants’ Demographics.

Name	Generation	Gender	Age	Age of migration	Parents’ nationalities	Languages spoken at home
Ade	2	F	38	n/a	Nigeria and United States	English
Alimatu	1.5	F	23	4	Guinea	Pular French English
Chike	1.5	M	22	14/15	Nigeria	Ibo French English
Gene	1.5	M	25	10	Ghana	Twi English
Jake	2	M	20	n/a	Ghana	Twi English
Jason	1.5	M	23	13	Ghana	Twi Ga English Ewe
Joseph	2	M	15	n/a	Ghana	Twi Ga English Ewe
Kaya	2	F	28	n/a	Liberia and Haiti	Creole Spanish English
Lily	2	F	23	n/a	Sierra Leone	Creole (English Creole) English
Lisa	1.5	F	20	11 to London/teenager to the United States	Ghana	Twi English
Maureen	2	F	20	n/a	Ghana	Twi English
Susan	1.5	F	20	8 to Italy/13 to the United States	Ghana	Twi English
Sida	2	F	28	n/a	Senegal and United States	Wolof Creole (Haitian Creole) French English
Steve	1.5	M	39	5	Nigeria	English Yoruba Ibo
Tinda	1.5	F	28	10	Gambia	Wolof English
Tiwo	2	M	22	n/a	Ghana and United States	English
Tomas	2	M	28	n/a	Cameroon	French English Bafong
Yema	2	M	27	n/a	Senegal	Wolof English

Although the West African immigrant population comes from a diversity of countries for diverse reasons, participants in this study unintentionally shared several characteristics. All of their families had the means to immigrate legally, and participants were either in school or college graduates at the time of study. In addition, five of the eight 1.5-generation participants spoke English prior to their arrival, and two were in English as a second language (ESL) classes for fewer than 2 years.

Data Sources

The researchers conducted 90-min semi-structured in-depth interviews with participants; interviews were transcribed verbatim, and all names are pseudonyms. Semi-structured interviews are useful for studies of how people make sense of particular phenomena or experiences (Bogdan & Biklen, 2007). Open-ended questions invited participants’ experiences and meaning-making of their families’ reasons for immigrating and their educational experiences. Researchers took field notes after the interviews, highlighting ideas for new questions.

Data Analysis

Data were analyzed using Charmaz’s (2006) conception of constructivist grounded theory, an inductive, iterative approach to analysis. We manually analyzed data for line-by-line codes, focus codes, and themes. After line-by-line coding 5 of the 18 interviews based on participants’ words, we asked questions relating to participants’ perspectives on dominant ideologies, including the American Dream. Next, we created focused codes based on patterns from line-by-line coding.

In reading the remaining interviews, we returned to the initial interviews, revising codes to reflect ongoing analysis and new literature. From the focus codes, we identified themes, such as beliefs in education. We wrote memos on and across individual transcripts, and shared drafts with critical colleagues. This process of analysis, rooted in data and researchers’ reflexive work, strengthened the credibility, usefulness, and originality of findings (Charmaz, 2006).

Findings

In examining the interplay of structure and agency in African immigrants’ perspectives on and experiences of the American Dream, we document how the complexities and commonalities of their lives reshape conventional notions of the Dream as they simultaneously buy into and challenge it. These findings offer new perspectives on how immigrants’ experiences of structures and agency reveal that there is no singular notion of the American Dream, but rather differential understandings of the nature and pursuit of it.

Understandings of the American Dream

Participants’ perspectives on achieving the American Dream are filled with references to dominant narratives around hard work and economic success. Economic success was referenced by 17 of 18 participants, whereas 8 participants shared an expanded notion of the American Dream that included a vision of opportunity and freedom toward making choices to pursue their own interests. Furthermore, 11 participants noted that, contrary to notions of the United States as a meritocracy, part of their understanding of the American Dream is the idea that some people have to work harder to achieve similar ends. Taken together, these interrelated understandings of the American Dream influence how African immigrants see themselves and their families as (un)successful in the United States.

“Definitely living the Dream”—Economic success

Participants described economic success as moving from the working class to the middle class. They referenced home ownership, economic stability, and employment, with the implied or explicit goal of social mobility. Jake, a 20-year-old, 2nd-generation Ghanaian, explains,

My dad has come a long way . . . he began by working in a taxi cab . . . has been through jobs like hotel jobs, and then at the same time he was going to school . . . he currently works in a hospital . . . industrial hygienist is his title. . . . He’s definitely living the dream.

Jake’s description of his father typifies the story of hard work and economic mobility (Lopez, 2001). For Gene, a 25-year-old, 1.5-generation Ghanaian, economic success means “having a TV, having a fridge, having a home, having a car. This is what middle-class people do.” Steve, a 39-year-old 2nd-generation Nigerian, saw the American Dream as providing opportunities for employment and greater access to technology than in Nigeria. Similarly, Tinda, a 28-year-old, 1.5-generation Gambian, points to her mother’s professional position as a nurse’s assistant to demonstrate her family experiencing their hopes for life in the United States. Lily and Ade, 2nd-generation immigrants from Sierra Leone and Nigeria, respectively, also describe their parents’ move from lower status and lower paid jobs to successfully earning a degree and entering a profession. Susan, a 20-year-old, 1.5-generation immigrant, referenced finances, saying that her mother immigrated so that she could make money to send to her family in Ghana. Sending money back was part of immigrants’ cultural values and evidence of economic success expected of life in the United States, which works as an internalized familial structure for African immigrants (Mohapatra & Ratha, 2011). When focusing on the American Dream as economic success, participants shared notions of individual agency in education and the workforce leading to success, success they see as possible because of the structural opportunities that exist in their new country.

“Seeking a fulfilled life”—Freedom of choice

Although the American Dream emphasizes social mobility (Obama, 2011; Rus, 2009), eight participants noted that economic success was merely part of the Dream, with their primary focus being freedom of choice. For example, Yema, a 27-year-old 2nd-generation Senegalese immigrant, believes that “economic opportunity is the greatest freedom,” aptly demonstrating the connection between these ideas. The Dream is not merely the well-paying job, but the potential opportunities it affords. Similarly, in talking about his father, Tiwo, a 22-year-old 2nd-generation Ghanaian, combines the idea of economic success and freedom of choice:

[H]e wants to be his own boss. He wants to have his own business, he wants to have his own house and be able to live independently. . . . The American Dream is being able to pursue what you want to do in your own way.

Yema and Tiwo share a view of the United States as filled with opportunities that they have agency to pursue, seeing economic success as the means to independence and control, not the end. For Ade, the goal is fulfillment:

I may not define it quite the way that, you know, the picket fence and 2.5 kids thing, but for me, my American Dream definitely connects to feeling like I have power over the way that me and my community get to seek a fulfilled life . . .

Understandings of the American Dream as economic success and freedom are not a dichotomy. Instead, these eight participants see economic success as leading to other goals, including caring for relatives and their own pursuit of happiness. Ade’s recognition that her perspective was outside of the dominant narrative extends Hochschild’s (1995) notion that “nothing in the ideology [of the American Dream] requires reducing success to money and power” (p. 36). Hochschild references other notions of success that include human flourishing and personal fulfillment. The Khmer youth in McGinnis’s (2009) study draw on cultural values of collaboration and modesty to reject the emphasis on individual effort. Although these youth confronted a paradox between value systems, some of the African immigrants incorporated notions of individualism along with cultural values into understandings of the American Dream. Their expanded understandings focus on freedom, opportunity, and fulfillment. Cultural values provide structures for immigrants to construct a broader American Dream than current discourses encompass.

Giving “people a fighting chance”—Challenges to the Dream

The mainstream story of the American Dream promotes the idea that the United States is a meritocracy whereby if people work hard, they achieve success (McGinnis, 2009). For 11 participants, their understanding of the Dream instead is of something that they, as African immigrants, have to work harder to achieve. They question the role of structures in individuals’ abilities to achieve success and draw attention to the interplay of agency and structural opportunities and constraints of discrimination. Yema, for example, explained,

The people that really need the American Dream, people who have zero opportunity remain to have zero opportunity sometimes because there’s none at home and they can’t get it anywhere else . . . unless you pack on a little shipping boat, fishing boat, and risk your life to get to a continent that barely wants you. And they’re reluctant to pull you out of the water.

Yema highlighted tensions embedded in the Dream narrative around the availability of opportunities—that not all people have access to the same opportunities and that some Americans do not want all immigrants to gain access.

African immigrants’ abilities to achieve their aspirations are constrained as a result of discriminatory structures around race, language, country of origin, gender, and sexual orientation. In particular, African immigrants contend with issues of racism that they may not have anticipated or experienced previously (Ojo-Ade, 2001). For example, Jake recognized discrimination toward immigrants seeking employment: “It’s not necessarily about the color of their skin . . . but just the discrimination of their backgrounds, like we would rather take somebody here . . . than this foreigner.” Thus, African immigrants may simultaneously experience racism due to skin color, while they are also subject to neo-racism, discrimination based on ideas about the superiority of cultures and countries of origin. S. J. Lee (2005) argued that successful students of color have an explicit understanding of how racism and social inequalities function and the role that education plays in challenging inequitable structures.

Participants incorporated understandings of structural discrimination into their American Dream with the notion of having to work harder, challenging the meritocracy narrative. Tomas noted having “to work twice as hard in school as White folks did . . . twice as hard as most people in general,” a finding reflected in Blum’s (2012) experiences as a teacher of Black high school immigrants. Susan similarly highlighted having to work harder:

I was aware that I had to work really hard to get to where I want to go, whereas other people may not have to work, they just have to continue what they do every day and they’ll get there. . . . Look, you’re in America and there are opportunities, but you have to fight for your right.

Notions of “hard work” and individual responsibility for succeeding are considered key aspects of the American Dream. However, for many African immigrants, “hard work” has a specific connotation that expects some people to work harder than others. As Ade noted, “the deck is stacked against people in poor and often colored communities.” Achieving the Dream means working hard against a stacked deck.

At the same time, participants saw these constraints as negotiable through political participation and activism. Responding to barriers that Ade recognized in intersections of race and class, she chose activism as a career that would create the possibility for change, saying, “I want to give people a fighting chance to be able to make other choices about how they want to lead their lives.” Similarly, Gene exhorted his friends to do more than complain: “I kept telling them . . . guys, you can talk all you want, but those of us that can vote, just go vote because that’s the only way.” Jake became involved in leading the African Student Association on his campus and changed its social focus to a focus on educating people about current events and diversity in Africa. Enacted agency with peers created institutions for incoming students to his campus, similar to S. J. Lee’s (1997) findings that college-going Hmong immigrants use education to challenge stereotypes and misconceptions. Although these actions may have limited impact, they have the potential to alter structures impeding immigrant students’ access to the American Dream, as well as those of their peers.

Achieving the American Dream Through Education

African immigrants have had the highest educational attainment rates of all immigrant groups in the United States (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2000). In discussing their experiences with education, participants highlight the role and influence of family expectations and schooling structures, and share complex understandings of agency in achieving the American Dream. They demonstrate how structures create opportunities for academic success. All participants shared a belief that education would lead to the Dream, and their discussion of choosing college majors offer a unique perspective on the interplay of structure and agency in their experiences.

“Standing out”—Believing in higher education

All participants and their families expressed a belief that college, and often graduate school, was necessary for success. Getting an education, however much hard work that entailed, was the only avenue participants shared around how they could achieve the Dream. Education meant not just passing classes, but standing out.

[T]he whole reason we uprooted and left Nigeria was about education, so of course, that became something that was primary for us . . . it wasn’t just about going to school and passing. It was about going to school and excelling. (Steve)

Education was an imperative—there was no other option about it. You know, we had to be educated . . . And not just be educated. We had to have good grades . . . That was something that we had to have and [our parents] were really strict about it. (Chike)

Their parents sent strong messages about the role of education, which became internalized as structures that supported students’ educational experiences. Ade exemplifies this interaction:

I graduated from university 11 years after I graduated from high school and my sister, it took her eight years. But we both were like, “Oh my God, we have to do it.” . . . And that was 110% attributable to the fact that my dad had made it clear that this is the path we are going to take, and even when he no longer had control over that . . . he had already set us on a path.

For Ade, completing her degree was a testament to the interplay of structures, specifically, cultural beliefs and values around education that her father put in place, and her own agency as she took time off from school to save money and attended three universities in search of one that supported her identities as a lesbian and a feminist. The expectation of going to college extends Valadez’s (2008) findings in his study of decision making among Mexican immigrant students as “structures become inhered in the minds of social actors resulting in the cultural norms and rules that produce predictable action” (p. 846). Such expectations enabled Ade to make choices with the end goal of completing her degree.

While attending college may be part of the informal rules and explicit expectations that guide behavior, participants made choices within these routines related to sociocultural and educational contexts. Gene spoke of a visit to Ghana, the country of his birth, which affected his decision making:

That trip was . . . an inspirational trip . . . Some of these kids, they’re my age . . . there’s nothing for them to do . . . and all they do is just wake up and just walk around. . . . I remember how I felt I have a great chance in America to make something of myself . . . I came back junior year with that focus in mind.

As a high school junior, with a teacher’s encouragement, Gene enrolled in Advanced Placement (AP) English to increase his chances to attend a selective college. He demonstrated agency in this choice, in interaction with structures, including his parents’ expectations and supports provided by school faculty. These structures “do not force an outcome, but serve the purpose of guiding individual decisions” (Valadez, 2008, p. 839). Within structures, participants made decisions to support academic careers. Thus, although a teacher encouraged Gene to take challenging courses, Kaya, a 2nd-generation immigrant with parents from Haiti and Liberia, decided to take physics rather than the less rigorous “physical science.”

I was supposed to take physics and I was like, “Do I really want to take physics my senior year? Who wants to take physics?” So I took physical science . . . and [the counselor] lets me . . . Day one, I was like, “Oh hell no . . . these people are like stupid! I can’t stay in here.” I went to her, by the end of the week, “Put me in physics now!”

Although Kaya lacked the structure of faculty who pushed her, her school offered structures enabling her to challenge herself if she chose. Where Kaya accessed course offerings, Ade sought to reach her academic goals by negotiating relationships with teachers whom she saw as capable of helping her. “I continued to seek out the role [of teacher’s pet] because I was usually able to develop friendships and relationships, I got special treatment,” such as field trips, knowledge of the school’s inner workings, and research assistantships. Ade’s experience shows her acting on her knowledge of the school system to get access to faculty’s time and academic positions.

Through individual agency and structural supports, Gene, Kaya, and Ade experienced schooling supportive of academic success. They spoke of teachers who demonstrated capacity to engage them and course offerings that offered rigor—teachers who, as part of schooling structures together with administrators, students, and others, act out organizational rules and routines creating or limiting opportunities (González, Stoner, & Jovel, 2003). Wassell et al. (2010) referred to teacher support as a “schema of caring” that works as a structure to support (or constrain) youths’ success. At the same time, Gene, Kaya, and Ade made choices enabling them to be successful within these structures. Their decisions aligned with the belief that education leads to achieving the American Dream, echoing stories that participants told of families’ experience of social mobility through hard work, and resonating with studies that conclude that African immigrants are optimistic about the potential for education.

Doing what is “required by my soul”—Choosing a major

For participants who defined the American Dream as the pursuit of freedoms, the interplay of structure and agency becomes apparent in their selection of college majors and careers. As reported in Table 2, 6 of the 18 participants chose majors aligning with family expectations of a professional career (e.g., doctor, lawyer), 10 did not, and 1, Alimatu, chose pre-med, following family expectations, and a humanities double major, outside of family expectations. One participant was in high school.

Table 2.

Participants’ College Type and Majors.

Name	Major	Type of college	Aligned with expectations?
Ade	Humanities	Private/HBCU
Alimatu	Women’s studies, African American studies, and pre-med	Private	✓
Chike	Switched from computer science to international studies	Private
Gene	Pre-law	Private	✓
Jake	Switched from pre-med to rehabilitation services	Public
Jason	Economics	Public	✓
Joseph	High school	n/a
Kaya	Public relations	HBCU
Lily	Family sciences	Public
Lisa	Biology (pre-med)	Public	✓
Maureen	Biology (pre-med)	Public	✓
Susan	Communications	Public
Sida	Creative writing	Private
Steve	Engineering (BS & master’s)	Private	✓
Tinda	Urban affairs (BA)Master’s of public administration	Public
Tiwo	Political science (pre-law)	Private
Tomas	Individualized study (foci in sports management, Africana studies, and French studies)	Private
Yema	Media communications (BA)Media management (master’s)	Public

Note. HBCU is an acronym for historicallyBlack colleges and universities in the United States.

For African immigrants, family expectations to obtain a degree worked as a structure that supported college going, yet potentially constrained them by focusing on economic well-being. Susan reflected on negotiating with her parents about her major:

It was a struggle with my parents getting them to accept that I can do communications. Like, “What is communications? Go be a doctor.” And then they’re always comparing you to what somebody else is doing. They say, “Her son came and he’s now a doctor.” “You see the car she’s driving?”

Susan’s parents wanted her to be a doctor, a prestigious, familiar, and well-paying profession that could enable her to fulfill the Dream of economic prosperity. Participants’ families valued economic well-being, similar to understandings of working- and middle-class Chinese immigrant parents who valued “practical” majors, such as pre-med or engineering, that lead to “safe” careers (Louie, 2004). At the same time, a good income would enable her to support her parents. Lisa’s mother, for example, told her, “I can’t wait for you to graduate so I can stop working and stay home and you can take care of me.” Meeting these expectations of caring for older relatives is easier for people with greater income levels.

The idea of pursuing freedom was prominent in 14 participants’ descriptions of their choices. Ten participants who chose less traditional majors spoke about doing what they want, or more emphatically, what is “required by my soul.” For example, Alimatu focused on courses in international government and politics, taking an advocacy job upon graduation. Although she had an expected pre-med concentration, she chose a career based on her passions. Chike also began with an expected major, computer science, which he changed to international studies because the topic interested him. Other participants began exploring non-traditional majors from the beginning. Tomas noted that he “dabbled” in a range of disciplines, including sports management, French studies, and Africana studies. Similarly, Tinda chose to major in urban affairs and government because she was interested in politics. One of her early courses inspired her to run for freshman class president. As participants entered college and the many opportunities offered, while maintaining the family expectation of obtaining a degree, they also began to move away from family expectations in considering a range of majors, reflecting notions of choice within the American Dream.

Of the six participants with majors aligned to expectations, four said that the choice was based on interests. Maureen, for example, a 2nd-generation Ghanaian immigrant, explained her choice of biology: “I have some doctors in that family . . . being around that, that’s what I wanted to be. So I never was pressured to be that.” The notion of opportunity to do what one wanted was taken up even by those who did what was expected. It is possible that family and cultural career expectations were internalized so that even though students felt they were making choices, they were in fact reproducing expectations. However, structuration theory points to the complexity behind decisions as cultural forces—family expectations—intersect with understandings of the Dream.

For participants who did not follow parents’ expectations around majors, they had a definite awareness of a lack of parental approval and pressure to be successful. Susan, for example, explained, “It’s still pressure on me because if I fail . . . it’s, ‘I told you to do nursing.’” In this case, family expectations were internalized, even as participants chose to not follow them. Participants’ choices, however, reflect a “limited range of rebellion” (Louie, 2004, p. 95, emphasis in original), in that even as they choose majors against parents’ wishes, they valued undergraduate and advanced degrees. These choices demonstrate recursive relationships between structure and agency where going to college was made possible by structures allowing participants to imagine new possibilities, holding the potential to alter expectations for the future. Alimatu illustrates this mutability of structure:

. . . we had this joke, “Oh, if you’re an African student, you’re going to be a doctor or some kind of scientist” . . . but hopefully it gets a little . . . easier for students or for people to be like, “No, actually I don’t want to do that, I want to be a dancer.”

The younger generation is altering expectations for future generations, similar to S. J. Lee’s (1997) findings of Hmong female students working to change cultural expectations around women attending college, demonstrating how agency can alter structures.

Although participants spoke of agency in choosing majors, two participants offered potential structural reasons that may have interacted with agency in selecting non-expected majors. Jake initially wanted to be a doctor, but then changed his mind:

I always said, “Oh, I want to be a doctor.” But when I see the things that it entails, the hard work . . . I’m a very social butterfly . . . and I feel like [being pre-med] takes away from the social, like I don’t know if I’ll be able to just close myself in and study . . . I just found that it wasn’t for me.

It is possible that medicine did not fulfill Jake’s needs as a self-identified social butterfly. However, in explaining why he opted to move away from pre-med, Jake did not know if he could study as much as the program demanded. Thus, another possibility is that Jake did not receive supports he needed to be successful and instead chose a less rigorous major. The rules and routines of a pre-med major could have been such that Jake felt he did not belong, or that he was not able to access resources necessary for success, extending Hansen et al.’s (1995) finding that Latino students’ educational decisions were a result of intentionality as well as structure, including a lack of resources to do well in challenging courses. Ade offered a comparable explanation for Nigerian immigrants’ career choices:

. . . a lot of them end up wanting to do their own thing, partially because they may not know the people they need to know to be able to get ahead . . . if I’m working at Merrill Lynch, maybe I’ll never get to be a VP because I don’t have the right connections.

Structures include social capital, a reference to the “old boys’ club” that is not accessible to immigrants. Varma (2010) found this to be true of Indian-born faculty who had difficulty entering established networks, preventing them from advancing professionally. Although no participants ascribed career choices to an inability to access resources, their choices take place with the context of structures that may constrain opportunities. The interplay of agency and structure in participants’ selection of majors highlights their belief in freedom, regardless of family expectations and future economic gain, even as structures may limit agency. In recognizing that certain career paths were less likely to lead to social mobility, participants spoke instead of choosing majors because topics interested them, demonstrating understandings of the Dream as pursuing their own interests.

Implications

For 1.5- and 2nd-generation African immigrants, the American Dream works as a powerful narrative about education in the United States. Even where personal experiences contradict the narrative, African immigrants used the Dream to frame their experiences and future aspirations. Focusing on interplays of structure and agency enables us to see how structures create contexts for individuals to act, enabling and constraining different possibilities. Participants made choices situated within a set of rules around education, drawn from family expectations and schooling structures; their choices were situated within the realities of institutionalized neo-racism, classism, and other forms of discrimination. Perhaps, because participants or their parents experienced success to some degree in completing college and obtaining employment that led to a certain income level, they maintained a belief in the Dream, unlike the Khmer youth in McGinnis’s (2009) study who did not attend and/or complete college.

African immigrants’ experiences in relation to the Dream have implications for practice, research, and theory. Implications for practice include the need for teachers to understand the complexity of structures at play within immigrants’ lives and how those structures interact with agency. Addressing these complexities can enable immigrant students to better access resources they need, instead of maintaining a belief that hard work alone leads to success (Hochschild, 1995).

Individuals do not merely demonstrate agency by acting in general, but by acting and making decisions with regard to structures in their lives. Participants demonstrate this by recognizing structures that support them as well as those that constrain them, and then by making choices about how to negotiate the structures. For example, it is likely that participants’ motivation and dedication encouraged their teachers to continue to support them. As such, it is important for teachers to see African immigrant students as active participants in their education, and not merely following a predetermined script. Following this, it is important for teachers to see African immigrant students as individuals within a heterogeneous cultural group. Most importantly to teachers, these findings demonstrate that African immigrant students carry family expectations of college, but that they need structural supports from school to access the college-going process.

For researchers, these findings are significant in terms of helping to understand the heterogeneity of experiences of African immigrants, despite shared countries of origin or similar beliefs around education. For researchers who plan on learning about this under-researched, growing part of the U.S. population, methodological choices, such as in-depth interviewing, can highlight some of this heterogeneity. Instead of seeing African immigrants as monolithic, such as a “model minority” (Massey, Mooney, Torres, & Charles, 2007), a structuration lens allows educators, researchers, and policymakers to see how structures, including family expectations and discrimination, interact with individual agency to create or limit possibilities.

The findings hold theoretical implications for showing that agency is influenced by societal and cultural structures. Future researchers may explore the ways in which these decisions reproduce or alter structures affecting African immigrants within U.S. society as both Black and immigrants. Optimism regarding potential to achieve the American Dream, despite structural barriers, was expressed by participants, who all asserted the importance of hard work and education. Earlier studies took a more pessimistic view of potential for achievement or change, considering discrimination as an almost insurmountable structural barrier to achievement (Akom, 2008), while some implied that structures are the reason that some immigrants are more successful than others (Rong & Brown, 2001).

In talking about the American Dream and their aspirations, participants shared how decisions interacted with structures, enabling them to achieve success—either in income levels or in a sense of personal fulfillment. At the same time, when participants expressed beliefs in the dominant ideology to any degree, these decisions have unintended consequences (McGrath, 2009). Using their own lives as evidence of a narrative of individualism that discounts the ever-present existence of discrimination in society may lead to an unintentional reproduction of structures limiting opportunities and blaming of those who are not successful (Sewell, 1992). According to this ideology, individuals who are not successful, who do not complete college, or who do not obtain a certain type of job are individuals who do not work hard enough. Simultaneously, participants expressed understandings that there is a need for change, and through voting, political activism, and other methods, society can be improved for all people to have better access to opportunities—opportunities to achieve the Dream. Thus, this dominant discourse is not problematized so much as are the realities of access and opportunity for African immigrants to pursue and achieve the American Dream.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Author Biographies

Michelle G. Knight is a professor at Teachers College, Columbia University, and a former secondary school teacher and college advisor. Her research and teaching interests focus on diversity and equity issues related to youth studies, urban teacher education, and culturally relevant methodologies. Her recent book (with Joanne Marciano) College Ready: Preparing Black and Latina/o Youth for Higher Education, A Culturally Relevant Approach is published by Teachers College Press.

Rachel Roegman is an assistant professor of educational leadership in the Department of Educational Studies at Purdue University. A former teacher in traditional and alternative schools, Rachel Roegman comes to education and research from a social justice perspective and a desire to create schools that serve all students well. Her research interests center on the interconnections between equity, contexts, and leadership. Her current research projects include equity-focused leadership of district superintendents and leadership practices of cooperating teachers working with marginalized populations.

Lisa Edstrom is a doctoral student at Teachers College, Columbia University. She also serves as the certification officer and is a lecturer for the Barnard Education Program at Barnard College, Columbia University. Her teaching centers on elementary education and STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) education in the context of teacher preparation. Her research interests include family involvement with urban schooling and educational reform.

References

Aalbers

M. B.

(2006). ‘When the banks withdraw, slum landlords take over’: The structuration of neighbourhood decline through redlining, drug dealing, speculation and immigrant exploitation. Urban Studies, 43(7), 1061-1086.

Abu El Haj

T. R.

(2007). “I was born here, but my home, it’s not here”: Educating for democratic citizenship in an era of transnational migration and global conflict. Harvard Educational Review, 77, 285-316.

Akom

A. A.

(2008). Ameritocracy and infra-racial racism: racializing social and cultural reproduction theory in the twenty-first century. Race Ethnicity and Education, 11(3), 205-230.

Awokoya

(2012). Identity constructions and negotiations among 1.5 and second generation Nigerians: The impact of family, school, and peer contexts. Harvard Educational Review, 82, 255-281.

Blum

(2012). High schools, race, and America’s future: What students can teach us about morality, diversity, and community. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press.

Bogdan

Biklen

(2007). Qualitative research in education: An introduction to theory and practice (3rd ed.). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

Charmaz

(2006). Constructing grounded theory: A practical guide through qualitative analysis. Los Angeles, CA: Sage.

Conchas

G. Q.

(2001). Structuring failure and success: Understanding the variability in Latino school engagement. Harvard Educational Review, 71, 475-504.

Davies

A. Z.

(2008). Characteristics of adolescent Sierra Leonean refugees in public schools in New York City. Education and Urban Society, 40, 361-376.

10.

Eslinger

J. C.

(2014). Navigating between a rock and a hard place: Lessons from an urban school teacher. Education and Urban Society, 46(2), 209-233.

11.

Foner

(2001). Introduction. West Indian migration to New York: An overview. In Foner

(Ed.), Islands in the city: West Indian migration to New York (pp. 1-22). Berkeley: University of California Press.

12.

Fuligni

A. J.

(1997). The academic achievement of adolescents from immigrant families: The role of family background, attitudes, and behavior. Child Development, 68, 351-363.

13.

Giddens

(1984). The constitution of society: Outline of the theory of structuration. Berkeley: University of California Press.

14.

González

K. P.

Stoner

Jovel

J. E.

(2003). Examining the role of social capital in access to college for Latinas: Toward a college opportunity framework. Journal of Hispanic Higher Education, 2, 146-170.

15.

Hansen

D. A.

Fisherkeller

Johnson

V. A.

(1995). The hidden persistence of immigrant “dropouts”: Distortions, blank spots and blind spots in research on schooling careers. International Journal of Educational Research, 23, 83-105.

16.

Harushimana

Awokoya

(2011). African-born immigrants in U.S. schools: An intercultural perspective on schooling and diversity. Journal of Praxis in Multicultural Education, 6, 34-48.

17.

Hochschild

J. L.

(1995). Facing up to the American dream: Race, class, and the soul of the nation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

18.

Kao

Tienda

(1995). Optimism and achievement: The educational performance of immigrant youth. Social Science Quarterly, 76, 1-19.

19.

Lee

J. J.

Cantwell

(2011). The global sorting machine: An examination of neo-racism among international students and postdocs. In Busser

Kempner

Marginson

Ordorika

(Eds.), Universities and the public sphere: Knowledge creation and state building in the era of globalization (pp. 47-64). New York, NY: Routledge.

20.

Lee

S. J.

(1997). The road to college: Hmong American women’s pursuit of higher education. Harvard Educational Review, 67, 803-827.

21.

Lee

S. J.

(2005). Up against whiteness: Race, school, and immigrant youth. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

22.

Lopez

G. R.

(2001). The value of hard work: Lessons on parent involvement from an (im)migrant household. Harvard Educational Review, 71, 416-437.

23.

Louie

(2004). “Being practical” or “doing what I want”: The role of parents in the academic choices of Chinese Americans. In Kasinitz

Mollenkopf

J. H.

Waters

M. C.

(Eds.), Becoming New Yorkers: Ethnographies of the new second generation (pp. 79-110). New York, NY: Russell Sage.

24.

Massey

D. S.

Mooney

Torres

K. C.

Charles

C. Z.

(2007). Black immigrants and natives attending selective colleges and universities in the United States. American Journal of Education, 113, 243-271.

25.

McCabe

(2011). African immigrants in the United States. Migration Policy Institute. Retrieved from http://www.migrationinformation.org/feature/display.cfm?ID=847#19

26.

McGinnis

T. A.

(2009). Seeing possible futures: Khmer youth and the discourse of the American dream. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 40, 62-81.

27.

McGrath

(2009). School disengagement and “structural options”: Narrative illustrations on an analytical approach. Young, 17, 81-101.

28.

Mohapatra

Ratha

(2011). Migrant remittances in Africa: An overview. In Mohaptra

Ratha

(Eds.), Remittance markets in Africa (pp. 3-70). Washington, DC: The World Bank.

29.

Obama

(2011, January). 2011 state of the union. Speech presented at the United States House of Representatives, Washington, DC.

30.

Ogbu

J. U.

Simons

H. D.

(1998). Voluntary and involuntary minorities: A cultural-ecological theory of school performance with some implications for education. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 29, 155-188.

31.

Ojo-Ade

(2001). Africans and racism in the new millennium. Journal of Black Studies, 32, 184-211.

32.

Peguero

A. A.

Bondy

J. M.

(2011). Immigration and students’ relationship with teachers. Education and Urban Society, 43, 165-183.

33.

Perry

(2003). Up from the parched earth: Toward a theory of African-American achievement. In Perry

Steele

Hilliard

III (Eds.), Young, gifted and Black: Promoting high achievement among African-American students (pp. 1-108). Boston, MA: Beacon.

34.

Rong

X. L.

Brown

(2001). The effects of immigrant generation and ethnicity on educational attainment among young African and Caribbean Blacks in the United States. Harvard Educational Review, 71, 536-565.

35.

Rong

X. L.

Preissle

(2009). Educating immigrant students in the 21st century: What educators need to know (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

36.

Roy

L. A.

Roxas

K. C.

(2011). Whose deficit is this anyhow? Exploring counter-stories of Somali Bantu refugees’ experiences in “doing school.” Harvard Educational Review, 81, 521-543.

37.

Rumbaut

R. G.

Ima

(1998). The adaptation of Southeast Asian refugee youth: A comparative study. Washington, DC: U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement.

38.

Rus

(2009). The American dream or the quest for the American utopia. Studia Universitatis Petru Major—Philologia, 8, 201-208.

39.

Sewell

W. H.

(1992). A theory of structure: Duality, agency and transformation. American Journal of Sociology, 98, 1-29.

40.

Traoré

R. L.

(2004). Colonialism continued: African students in an urban high school in America. Journal of Black Studies, 34, 348-369.

41.

U.S. Bureau of the Census. (2000). Profile of selected demographic and social characteristics: 2000. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. Retrieved from http://www.census.gov/population/cen2000/stp-159/STP-159-africa.pdf

42.

Valadez

J. R.

(2008). Shaping the educational decisions of Mexican immigrant high school students. American Education Research Journal, 45, 834-860.

43.

Varma

(2010). India-born in the U.S. science and engineering workforce. American Behavioral Sciences, 53, 1064-1078.

44.

Warikoo

Carter

(2009). Cultural explanations for racial and ethnic stratification in academic achievement: A call for a new and improved theory. Review of Educational Research, 79, 366-394.

45.

Wassell

B. A.

Hawrylak

M. F.

LaVan

S. K.

(2010). Examining the structures that impact English language learners’ agency in urban high schools: Resources and roadblocks in the classroom. Education and Urban Society, 42, 599-619.

46.

Waters

M. C.

(1999). Black identities: West Indian immigrant dreams and American realities. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

47.

Yin

R. K.

(2003). Case study research: Design and methods. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.