Abstract
Latina/o educational differentials have been studied predominantly from a deficit standpoint that emphasizes a lack of cultural capital. More recently, researchers began to reject this deficit perspective, foregrounding instead the cultural capital that enables Latina/o students to succeed academically. The very idea that Latina/o students possess cultural capital is new to higher education, which has historically undervalued Latina/o student experience and community history. Cultural capital, however, plays a crucial role in Latina/o student academic achievement. The authors’ study of junior- and senior-level Latina/o students attending a primarily White four-year research university in the Midwest examines Latina/o community cultural wealth, particularly with regard to navigating the academy. The authors also suggest institutional changes to develop policies that address Latina/o student presence from a capital rather than a deficit perspective.
In 2003, Latinas/os became the largest minority group in the United States (Cohn 2010). Compared with previous trends, a larger number of Latina/o high school graduates (69 percent) are enrolling in college (Lopez and Fry 2013). Amid this enrollment growth, however, Latinas/os continue to graduate at a rate significantly lower (15.5 percent) than Asians (53.9 percent), Whites (36.2 percent), and Blacks (22.5 percent) (Ryan and Bauman 2016). In explaining these trends, many scholars choose to focus on a perceived lack of Latina/o cultural capital and the impact on academic success, suggesting that a lack of the specific cultural capital valued in higher education produces lower levels of education among Latinas/os. Cultural capital refers to the set of knowledge, skills, and language that allows people to navigate social institutions, including higher education, with fluidity (Bourdieu and Passeron 1977). Indeed, many Latinas/os are first-generation college students, which means that there are few in their family and social circles to provide and nurture the knowledge and set of skills that presumably fuel academic attainment. 1 Scholarly assumption of such a deficit became dominant in explaining Latina/o educational underachievement, deeply influencing higher education policy, particularly in student affairs.
Our study adds to existing research examining Latina/o community cultural wealth in higher education from the perspective of presence, rather than absence. We use interview data with junior- and senior-level Latina/o students attending a primarily White four-year research university in the Midwest to document the role of Latina/o community cultural wealth in navigating the university. Yosso’s (2005b) community cultural wealth framework provides a typology that highlights Latina/o student capital, often undermined or undervalued. We also suggest institutional changes to develop policies that address Latina/o student presence from a capital rather than a deficit perspective. A growing number of researchers now recognize that Latina/o cultural background can provide students with tools for academic success, rather than handicapping their progress (Ayala and Chalupa 2016; Delgado-Guerrero, Cherniack, and Gloria 2014; Martínez Alemán 2000). Yosso’s model has had deep influence on the field, providing language for more empowering avenues of inquiry. Consequently, the research question driving this study is how can we understand the experiences of Latina/o college students using the community cultural wealth typology? Our study contributes to this emergent area of research through its documentation of Latina/o advanced undergraduate student voices and our focus on the enhancement of student ability to navigate higher education because of assets in cultural capital. Ultimately, this work points toward new directions in the study of Latina/o cultural capital and education.
Latina/o College Attainment and Cultural Capital
Unquestionably, the demographic growth of Latinas/os has increased primary and secondary education enrollments. Fry and Lopez’s (2012) report notes that in 2012, Latinas/os composed 23.9 percent of U.S. public school enrollment, an increase from 16.7 percent in 2000. This primary and secondary education increase is echoed in college enrollment as more Latina/o high school graduates (69 percent) are enrolling in college compared with their White counterparts (67 percent) (Lopez and Fry 2013). In 2006, Latinas/os composed 11 percent of college students. In 2012, they made up 16.5 percent of the nation’s 18- to 24-year-old college students, showing the increase in their demographic representation nationwide.
At 14.5 percent, however, Latinas/os ages 25 and older have lower college graduation rates than their counterparts (Lopez and Fry 2013). Asian students graduate from college at a rate of 51 percent, Whites at 34.5 percent, and Blacks at 21.2 percent (Lopez and Fry 2013). Lopez and Fry (2013) did not include statistics for Native American students. One explanation for these differentials may lie in the lower enrollment rates of Latinas/os (56 percent) at four-year universities compared with Whites (72 percent), because Latinos are more likely to enroll in community colleges (Lopez and Fry 2013). This enrollment pattern is regrettable, as scholars find that students who enroll in four-year universities are more likely to graduate (Arbona and Nora 2007; Nuñez 2009). Furthermore, in addition to the interracial differences in college attainment, intragroup differences exist within the Latina/o population. In 2011, only 10 percent of Mexicans, 11 percent of Central Americans, 18 percent of Puerto Ricans, and 22 percent of other Latinas/os had a bachelor’s degree or more compared with 27 percent of Cubans and 32 percent of those from South American countries (U.S. Census Bureau 2012).
Bourdieu’s and Passeron’s (1977) concept and theory of cultural capital focuses on the study of higher education and suggests that elites or dominant groups possess a particular set of knowledge, skills, and language that allows them to move fluidly through social institutions. This access depends upon the legitimization and reproduction of dominant culture in the physical, symbolic and social spaces of higher education (Ayala 2016; Moore 2008; Neely and Samura 2011). In particular, the racialization of higher education as White normalizes knowledge, skills, and experiences associated with whiteness, undervaluing the cultural capital of students of color (Ayala 2016; Barajas and Ronnkvist 2007; Gonzalez 2012).
Whereas Bourdieu and Passeron (1977) intended the theory of cultural capital to serve as a critique of formal education by highlighting the biases within its structure (Gonzalez 2012), it gives way to the deficit perspective that Massey et al. (2003) described as “the simplest and most widely recognized explanation for poor academic performance” (p. 5). The deficit perspective proposes that a lack of dominant cultural capital is responsible for lower educational attainment (Cabrera et al. 1999; Eimers and Pike 1997; Schwitzer et al. 1999). This approach, however, reproduces the 1959 culture of poverty analysis initiated by Lewis (1975) in which Mexican families are deemed not to have cultural values that motivate economic and academic success. The deficit approach neglects to expose the structural constraints that repress Latina/o agency, such as “school funding mechanisms, regressive taxation policy, and/or a lack of opportunity” (Gonzalez 2012:126; see also Yosso 2005a). In response to this academic conclusion, the educational system has crafted and adopted policies that assume Latina/o children and their families can be “fixed” through assimilation. The close institutional alignment of White cultural values with academic success is normalized as students are expected to identify with the dominant group in order to advance academically (Valenzuela 1999; Yosso 2005b).
These conditions are alienating for students and their families, and school environments can appear hostile and unwelcoming to those outside of the white middle class (Dixson and Rousseau 2005; Gonzalez 2012; Valencia 2002; Valenzuela 2005). Latina/o lower education attainment has been normalized in the social science literature because of scholarly assumption of a disregard for education among Latino families. In reality, there is profound respect for education among Latinas/os, which exists perhaps alongside an unwillingness to submit to degrading treatment by school authorities and the institutions they represent. Latino parents’ lack of engagement with institutions of schooling can be attributed to transportation, work schedules, and childcare but should also be recognized as a cultural survival mechanism. As scholars criticize the deficit perspective and the promotion of assimilation, we create space to validate the cultural capital that Latina/o students possess already and can positively influence their academic persistence and attainment (Hurtado and Carter 1997; Rendón, Jalomo, and Nora 2000; Tierney 1992).
Acknowledging Capital: Reversing the Framework in the Study of Latina/o Education
Challenges to the deficit model develop from critical race theory (CRT) and Latina/o critical race theory (LatCrit) scholarship. CRT emerged from critical legal studies in the 1970s, which exposed the reproduction of class hierarchy in the socio-legal system. CRT extends the analysis to make race a central category of analysis, introducing new methodologies into legal scholarship. Arriola (1997), however, tells us that CRT fails to account for the presence of racialized subjects outside of the White/Black binary, namely, Latinas/os. LatCrit calls attention to Latina/o college student attainment and documents the value of Latina/o cultural literacies to academic success, although there is little study of the relation between educational attainment and curricular content, especially content that validates the identities and capital we discuss here.
This brief genealogy highlights LatCrit’s debt to ethnic studies scholarship, as Lynn et al. (2002) acknowledge. Early texts of Chicano and African American studies challenge the methodologies and inherent biases of traditional disciplines (Romo and Paredes 1978; Takaki 1979). Their conclusions inform LatCrit, which from its earliest iterations is intersectional (Arriola 1997) and, like CRT, values personal narrative and storytelling. We must also acknowledge the origins of LatCrit in community educational interventions, which themselves led to the establishment of ethnic studies.
Yosso (2005b) defined community cultural wealth as “the array of cultural knowledge, skills, abilities and contacts possessed by socially marginalized groups that often go unrecognized and unacknowledged” (p. 69). This concept recognizes positive self-image and cultural value, which lead to empowered salient Latina/o identities. Yosso’s (2005b) community cultural wealth model develops a typology that includes aspirational capital, linguistic capital, familial capital, social capital, navigational capital, and resistant capital. Our study prompts recognition of an additional form of community cultural wealth, which we call racial and/or ethnic empowerment and discuss below. Acknowledgment of Latina/o capital in higher education can lessen obstacles students face and build a foundation from which to address challenging experiences that arise for Latinas/os in college.
Aspirational capital refers to the “ability to maintain hopes and dreams for the future, even in the face of real and perceived barriers” (Yosso 2005b:77), and scholars find that Latinas/os continue to hold high academic aspirations amid statistical data that marks them as having the lowest levels of educational attainment among other racial and ethnic groups (Auerbach 2001; Delgado-Gaitan 1992; Gándara 1995). Because Latina/o cultural capital is often reduced to bilingualism, linguistic capital is one of the most talked-about forms of capital among our respondents. Linguistic capital “includes the intellectual and social skills attained through communication experiences in more than one language and/or style” (Yosso 2005b:78).
Familial capital “refers to those cultural knowledges nurtured among familia (kin) that carry a sense of community and history, memory, and cultural intuition” (Delgado Bernal 1998; Yosso 2005b:79). Familial capital is demonstrated in the frequent mention of the role of families and communities by Latina/o students in our sample, who link family respect and cultural pride to their educational attainment. Social capital signifies networks of people that enable access to information, knowledge, or resources (Bourdieu 1972; Yosso 2005b) as well as other forms of capital, such as human and cultural (Hopkins et al. 2013:288). Scholars have examined the instrumental and emotional support from social capital that promotes Latina/o student persistence and higher education attainment (Coleman 1998; Putnam 2000; Stanton-Salazar 2001; Yosso 2005b).
The group of university students we interviewed were privileged by their advanced position as junior and seniors; they spoke of collaborative work across heterogeneous networks that enabled them to navigate college spaces. This ability to maneuver the social spaces of the academy and other institutions is referred to as navigational capital (Yosso 2005b:80). Ayala and Murga (2016) have examined the multidimensional agency readily apparent in people’s navigation of spaces even as they confront macro and micro racial, ethnic, gendered, and religious aggressions.
Resistant capital is the knowledge and skill that develop from having “oppositional behavior that challenges inequality” (Yosso 2005b:80). Resistant capital is accumulated as students of color exercise multidimensional agency to navigate and survive higher education, adapting, negotiating, resisting, and transforming the environment through their presence and their community cultural wealth (Ayala and Murga 2016; Freire 1970; Giroux 2001; McClean 2015; Solórzano and Delgado Bernal 2001; Solórzano and Yosso 2002). Students in our sample reveal this form of capital as they discuss familial socialization in relation to their ideas of being Latina/o in the United States.
We add to Yosso’s typology a new category that we call racial and/or ethnic empowerment capital, which was revealed in this study and refers to the sense of pride that students feel by being members of their racial and/or ethnic group. This pride is motivational and transformative, enabling students to remain connected to, and even reinforce, their racial and/or ethnic identities. This racial and/or ethnic pride motivates academic achievement and promotes student engagement in addressing challenges facing Latina/o communities outside of the university.
Overall, moving away from deficit models to a community cultural wealth perspective validates a unique Latina/o cultural capital conducive to educational attainment. Following, we examine narratives of Latina/o students in our sample that speak of the benefit of community cultural wealth in navigating university spaces. Simultaneously, we suggest institutional changes to develop policies that address Latina/o student presence from a capital rather than a deficit perspective.
Data and Methods
Our study uses a qualitative case study approach; it is both deductive—applying Yosso’s typology to the interview data—and inductive, as we added a new type of community wealth (racial and/or ethnic empowerment capital) emerging from student narratives. Our use of the case-study approach originates from our interest in an in-depth understanding of Latina/o college students’ experiences at a primarily White higher education institution (Gall, Gall, and Borg 2003; Yin 2003). We use primary data collected from 50 self-identified Latina/o students enrolled at a primarily White four-year research university in the Midwest. According to the U.S. Census Bureau (2017), as of July 2016, the state where the university is located had a population of 9,928,300 people. The racial composition in the state was 75.49 percent White, 5.09 percent Latina/o, 14.29 percent African American, and 3.1 percent Asian American. Among the state’s population 25 years and older, 26.9 percent had a bachelor’s degree or higher. Finally, in 2015, the median household income in the state was $49,576, and the median value of owner-occupied housing units was $122,400 (U.S. Census Bureau 2017).
In fall 2014, Midwestern University (MU) had a total undergraduate enrollment of nearly 35,341 students, of whom 3.7 percent (1,413 students) self-identified as Latina/o. To develop our sample, we contacted the registrar’s office at MU to request that they send a call for participants to all 280 junior-level (with 56–87 credits completed) and 318 senior-level (with 88 or more credits completed) Latina/o students. We also sent an e-mail and flyers to all of the registered student organizations that targeted Latina/o students on campus. Fifty female and male students volunteered as participants in our study and were each compensated for their participation with a $10 gift card. They represent 8.4 percent of the total junior- and senior-level Latina/o population enrolled at MU at the time. Of the sample, 46 percent were classified as juniors and 54 percent as seniors at the time of the call for participants. Once the sample was determined, we set up interview appointments and mailed a consent form and a demographic questionnaire to the participants. A trained Latina research assistant conducted the semistructured open-ended 30-minute to 2-hour interviews in a small conference room on campus. The topics covered included identity, college and professional aspirations and transitions, and significance of student ethnic and/or racial identity in their lives as college students, among other topics. We digitally recorded and transcribed the interviews and coded using Dedoose software. The initial coding involved line-by-line and paragraph-by-paragraph coding (Charmaz 2006; Flick 2014). The second step involved a focused coding in which the first author synthesized the main themes that emerged from student responses (Charmaz 2006; Flick 2014).
Overall, the average age of the students in our sample is 22 years, with 54 percent women and 46 percent men. In the demographic questionnaire, students were asked about their ethnic identity as an open-ended question: “Ethnicity refers to the category of people sharing a common culture (e.g. language, customs, religion). Based on this definition, how do you ethnically define?” The frequency of the students’ ethnic self-classifications is presented in Table 1.
Latina/o Students’ Ethnic Self-classification.
Most of the students were born in the United States (86 percent) and are either second (72 percent) or third (10 percent) generation. Only 18 percent of the students are first-generation U.S. citizens, and two thirds claimed to be bilingual. A majority (60 percent) attended K–12 schools that were mostly White. The socioeconomic status of the students’ home neighborhoods, however, seems diverse. About 44 percent of the students represented their family’s neighborhoods as middle class, and another one third identified their neighborhoods as economically and/or socially disadvantaged.
Findings
Latina/o students encounter unique obstacles in their pursuit of higher education. When asked about whether in her community, her high school and/or among her friends, it is expected that kids go to college, a Latina who grew up in an economically and socially disadvantaged neighborhood says, A lot of the Latinos in my high school they felt scared to ask for help . . . but I separated myself . . . from the Latino culture . . . because I wasn’t getting enough, I mean I was friends with them but I felt like I needed to be challenged in some way.
The student speaks of her pursuit of education alongside her decision to disassociate from other Latina/o students, a coping strategy revealed in this study of Latina/o community wealth. Her admission that she “separated [her]self from the Latino culture” because “I wasn’t getting enough” conveys an association with underachievement. Furthermore, the response perhaps expresses a desire to distance from potential negative judgment by outsiders. If a community is disparaged at an institutional level, then one can assume that those self-identified and/or institutionally identified with the group will be judged negatively at the individual level. When the student talks of wanting to be “challenged,” she announces her own aspirations of academic achievement and her willingness to enter the unfamiliar spaces of the institution, which run counter to the choices of her peers. Not to seek help is to lose access to information that this student values, perhaps regarding college applications and scholarships. Notice she does not say the other students “wouldn’t ask for help.” She says they were “scared to ask for help.” The first is a refusal. The second holds within it the understanding that help is needed, and the knowledge that seeking it might feel diminishing, even humiliating. That fear governs this decision tells us that the price is too high.
In another instance, a 22-year-old Latino whose father worked at a factory and later as a farm worker answers the following to the same question: The majority of my Latino friends they would always say “oh yeah I am just going to work in a factory job” so education [took] a back seat. Whereas more of my White friends were like “ok let’s go to this university or this university.”
This student’s answer replicates a common cultural assumption: education is White. In its simplest sense, it could mean that Latinas/os choose not to pursue education because it is a world unfamiliar to them. On the other hand, when we consider the previous student’s answer, we are able to provide context for both, even if the students did not attend the same school. Statistics regarding Latina/o college attendance and career paths tell us that Latinas/os everywhere in the United States face obstacles to pursuing higher education. The comment above communicates nonchalance, and the acceptance of a lesser option: “oh yeah, I am just going to work in a factory job.” The fear identified by the first student and the nonchalant attitude identified by the second, are two sides of the same coin. The student’s representation of his peers’ interest in higher education is an assessment of social hierarchies and capital (“just a factory job”) because working on the line does not accrue the social capital associated with economic and other forms of success. Nonchalance is the means by which one survives anonymous institutional indifference or even the outright rejection that constrains aspirations.
Both of the students’ answers seem to reinforce the stereotype that Latinas/os do not value education, and there are those in our sample who did not receive parental or other family encouragement to go to college. Alexander et al. (2017) showed that parental noninvolvement does not necessarily affect academic achievement negatively. More important are student interpretations of the reasons why parents do not or are unable to engage more with their child’s schooling. When asked about his experiences transitioning from high school to college, a Mexican American male student from an economically disadvantaged neighborhood says, Well it was difficult because uh none of my family before me had ever gone to college so I was basically the first one to experience everything so it was just kind of a shock. Like once you get into the flow of it like wow these classes are so much work, so much this and so different and then you are far away from your family.
The student isolates his lack of generational institutional knowledge, social and navigational capital. He speaks of encountering a set of unknown experiences for which he had no prior information to guide him, no college stories of a mother, father, sister, or brother. The encounters are so outside the familiar, so removed from cultural norms, such violations of expectation, that to undergo them is surprising, upsetting, and even violently disruptive.
Student affairs discourse on the transition to college assumes that the first-year experience is challenging for all students. But to meet one’s first-year experience in a state of shock, with little or no social network to rely upon, is to function under a profound duress. This feeling of isolation was shared by many Latina/o students in the sample. Some speak of the human capital deficit they face while in college, often times noting how ill-prepared they are to perform well in certain classes compared with their White classmates or friends. Although these existing inequalities—encountered first in primary and secondary education—play a role in Latina/o educational challenges, here, we focus on Latina/o students’ representations of their own cultural capital and how it empowers. The fact is that both of the students we mention above have progressed to advanced undergraduate status. Certainly, they faced obstacles unacknowledged in educational discourse on student under/achievement. Their backgrounds, however, also provided them with tools and strategies to surmount those challenges, often without institutional support. We now discuss in detail student responses that demonstrate the various forms of capital.
Linguistic Capital: The Default Capital
Language serves the purpose to communicate with one another, sharing and acquiring human, social, and cultural capital. In the United States, the most valuable cultural capital centralizes Whiteness (Barajas and Ronnkvist 2007; Gonzalez 2012; Neely and Samura 2011) and can render it difficult for Latina/o students to recognize their own community cultural wealth, which was evident in our sample. A majority of the students, however, did speak of their linguistic capital. When asked what he thought was the most important asset in being Colombian Hispanic, a 22-year-old male said, “Being bilingual definitely! . . . in fact, without being bilingual, I wouldn’t have wanted to go to Spain this summer.”
The student’s answer pinpoints bilingualism as a source of capital that grants access to opportunity. Others also speak of bilingualism as a source of affirmation, especially in Spanish language classes. Linguistic capital, therefore, becomes a form of navigational capital in specific academic spaces, particularly the Spanish classroom and education abroad experiences in Spanish-speaking countries. Nevertheless, is important to note that many Latina/o students are not bilingual. For non-Spanish-speaking Latina/o students, the common narrative of being Latina/o and bilingual became an added stressor rather than a source of capital: Spanish [teachers] automatically assume that if they see a Latino that they know Spanish and everything about it but no. . . . My brother and I, my dad wanted us to learn English first and then learn Spanish in school or like to transition over and that didn’t work out whatsoever . . . so I always have to explain it to my Spanish teachers like look I am Latina and I understand that you expect me to know it but I don’t so you have to treat me like I am one of these other [non-Spanish speaker] people.
Familial Capital: A Foundational Form of Capital
Familial capital is the second most-discussed type of community cultural wealth among our respondents. Scholars often focus on socialization and navigational skills learned in the family that help students manage symbolic, physical, and social academic spaces (Ayala 2016). Equally important, however, is the emotional support that many Latina/o families—even those who do not have college experiences—provide. This support is especially important because Latina/o students are often bombarded with negative messages about their possibilities of success in higher education. But a 22-year-old Colombian female student from an economically and socially disadvantaged neighborhood asked to talk about family messages and feelings regarding education said, My mom always told me too that I have the determination to continue with my education. . . she was held back a lot during her professional career when she was growing up and she really wanted to instill in us that doors are open.
Another student, a Mexican-American woman majoring in food industry management answers the same question, [My family] are farm workers and um I helped them even now that I am in undergrad and every summer you know I would help them and they are picking and well “you know you better get an education because if not you are going to be in the fields all the time” for me it is like “ahhh I don’t want to be in the fields it is so hot!” So, for me I think education was stressed very um it was a very important thing for my parents and for them to teach us that we needed to get a higher education.
These students share positive family messages regarding education, which instill determination and frame education as the means to a better life. Although the large majority of our respondents do not address objective or practical skills provided by their families, their narratives are filled with messages of persistence, documenting how familial and community socialization became a source of capital, especially where Latina/o students are marginalized. These messages of persistence challenge deficit perspective assumptions that Latina/o families do not value education and that lower levels of educational attainment are “normal” for their communities. Such assumptions mobilize a culture of poverty conclusion to make cultural arguments about Latina/o underachievement instead of structural arguments that document the institutional racism, ethnocentrism, classism, sexism, and heterosexism that mitigate success. Even students who did not hear sustained family messages about the value of higher education felt that education was valued in their family and their goals were respected, even if members were unable to provide academic or financial support.
Aspirational Capital: Paying Back and Paying Forward
Aspirational capital refers to the type of capital that enables Latina/o students to navigate higher education spaces by relying on their hopes for the future. Our interviews demonstrated that it did not matter whether the familial capital possessed by students was emotional or practical, it played a critical role in the aspirational capital of a majority. A large number of our respondents also acknowledge the debt felt toward their families and communities. For example, when asked about who has most influenced her success or aspirations, a self-identified Puerto Rican and American woman says, “my family,” adding, I want to make them proud and I am an out-of-state student and it is very expensive to come here . . . my family has made a lot of sacrifices . . . and knowing what they have done and for me to be able to come here and have the experience that I have or had or continue to have is just what drives me to continue to do well in school. . . . It is definitely because of them that I work as hard as I do.
In other cases, students talk about aspiring to help other family and/or community members access information about how to reach college. When asked what graduating from MU means to her, a Mexican female student who describes her background as middle-class says, It means a next step to getting to where I actually want to be. I want to be a doctor and I want to go back to Latin America and I want to help childhood obesity. . . . I am here because of my dad, his education, his striving and I got lucky. . . . So, I want to spread the message that my dad gave to me. . . . I want to help other people get there.
A 23-year-old Latina majoring in food industry management with a minor in Chicano/Latino studies, says the following about her goals and aspirations, Um . . . I think for me it’s being able to uh empower other Latinas just um with what I am doing and speaking to other women who are in similar situations as I was growing up and being able to tell them like you can go to higher education if you want to.
Although a majority of students speak about abstract goals, in many cases students already had a very clear idea of how they would put their education into practice to address the needs of their families and communities, such as one student’s commitment to dismantling the school-to-prison pipeline in urban schools that serve students of color. As these responses show, the majority of students discuss their future goals as a strong propellant for persistence and educational attainment, especially at moments when they face challenges in college.
Social Capital: Not What You Know, but Who You Know
In addressing their experiences at MU, many talked about the role of social capital in achieving junior- and senior-level classifications. Social capital represents the social relations and networks among family or community members. Whereas many share experiences regarding the importance of their networks in acquiring human capital, they also related how their networks are conducive to civic engagement (Coleman 1988; Putnam 2000). Here, we observe a strong and fluid relationship between familial and social types of capital, evidence of dynamic and often interdependent relationships.
Life experiences among the majority of the students are diverse. Some come from farmworker migrant families, having traveled through various geophysical and sociodemographic spaces (e.g., Texas to Michigan and back). This ability to traverse brings with it knowledge of different cultural, economic, and racial communities, contributing to social capital and intercultural competence. This capital is also accrued while at MU and plays a role in academic attainment. We see this in the interviews when students highlight the role of their interracial friendships. Although students may speak of not receiving encouragement from their parents to go to college (often because parents do not have a high level of educational attainment themselves), these students nevertheless develop social networks that fortified their commitment and enabled access to higher education.
Others communicate experiences in predominantly White schools and how those friendships provide them with human and cultural capital that prompt college attendance. For example, a Mexican woman notes, The people that I hung out with . . . their parents were like . . . like “you are going to college” and I feel like that was a really big influence on me because I never really thought about it and I always just assumed that college is too expensive and it was always like I thought about my family like I am not going to put my family through debt you know and I just started finding about all these . . . um . . . you know programs, scholarships that you could get.
Latina/o students in our sample also speak of the role of interest-based and racial and ethnic-based organizations in navigating academic spaces. Interest-based counterspaces are places where students sharing an academic or nonacademic interest come together regardless of racial or ethnic background (Ayala and Chalupa 2016). Race- and ethnic-based counterspaces, on the other hand, are social spaces where students who share an interest or an identity in a racial or ethnic group come together, such as Latina/o academic spaces or student organizations (Ayala and Chalupa 2016). These counterspaces provide Latina/o students with social capital in the form of friendships or networks with faculty and staff members and also instill in many a feeling of belonging (Ayala and Chalupa 2016; Nuñez 2011). Belonging refers to a sense of cohesion and has been found to be critical in Latina/o student educational persistence and attainment (Cortez 2011; Nuñez 2009; Solórzano, Ceja, and Yosso 2000; Von Robertson, Bravo, and Chaney 2016).
In many cases, participation in these organizations allows students to develop social capital, in addition to a sense of belonging and the opportunity for civic engagement, as the following response from a self-identified Mexican Latina sorority member from an economically disadvantaged neighborhood illustrates: I am part of a Latina organization um we you know we try to support a lot of Latino organizations. . . . I have been in like a lot of e-board positions and I know you know how to request money or what departments to go to or who to talk to, I feel more involved within the MU community and within the [local] community as well.
While exemplifying social capital, this quotation also highlights how social capital can inform navigational capital. Moreover, often students accrue social capital through relationships with allies of the same or different racial backgrounds. One student, a self-identified Mexican woman who is majoring in Spanish and minoring in English says, not all White people are like that [racist] like not all Americans [Whites] are like that . . . a journalism teacher . . . she helped me write and write and write and then she told me and she is like have you ever considered applying to college. My parents used to always tell me graduate from high school, graduate from high school but they never really looked into college because they never knew anything about college until I met this teacher and she was White!
Like many of our interviewees, this student equates being American with being White. Perhaps against expectations, a White teacher provided the student with information and encouragement to apply to college.
Institutional support for college access and matriculation is an important factor, but the more abstract, yet relevant, familial capital can nurture open attitudes that enable students to develop social capital while in college. This openness prompts students to approach gatekeepers who can support attainment, such as advisers who will direct to financial and other forms of support for which Latina/o students might be uniquely qualified to apply. In the larger university context, there exist special programs, such as recruitment initiatives targeting underrepresented communities, bridge programs, offices devoted to student of color retention and persistence, diversity and inclusion offices, and academic curricula that centralize the study of women and communities of color. These initiatives and programs are instituted to recruit, retain, and maximize educational success for nonmajority students by promoting access to relevant university resources and attempting to provide familiar, welcoming, and affirming spaces for social interaction.
Navigational Capital: The Invisible Maneuvering Capital
Latina/o college students vary in their knowledge of the normative cultural capital conducive to academic persistence and attainment, and some challenges make educational attainment taxing. Although many of our Latina/o participants relayed feeling ill prepared to navigate MU, it is significant that our sample group has achieved junior- or senior-level classifications. These student narratives highlight multidimensional agency, which simultaneously adapts, negotiates, resists, and transforms (Ayala and Murga 2016). Furthermore, the narratives speak of navigational capital, the “skills of maneuvering through social institutions” (Yosso 2005b:80), which allow a sense of belonging at the university and enable competent movement through academic spaces. Sometimes, this navigational capital is the product of already established structures to which Latina/o students have had access. For example, when asked how often a female immigrant from a middle-class background interacts with administration, a 20-year-old self-identified Mexican woman who is a pre-med major says, Not often just because a lot of the time . . . um . . . I fall back on myself, my sister, my parents and as far as advisers go . . . I feel like I don’t need them yet because right now I know my requirements and what I have to go through. I am part of the Charles Drew Science Program and we meet with them once a year and they tell us this is your schedule.
The class background of this Latina student seems to have prepared her for higher education, as she is able to rely on a sibling and parents who hold relevant and useful knowledge. But her response also conveys what Pérez (2017) has identified as an overreliance on peers and family among Latina/o students, who seek out and depend upon informal networks of information, rather than the formal channels of access established by the university to aid in student progress toward a degree.
The majority of the students are not familiar with MU’s spaces, yet they are able to navigate. A repeated challenge is the cost of education, including the price of books. Social and navigational capital, however, provide knowledge and skills to meet economic challenges. Students might check out course texts from the library, or rent or buy online for less expense. Sometimes, the navigational capital of the students becomes apparent in narratives of bold and assertive agency in maneuvering MU. When asked about her experience at MU, a self-identified Latina and American female student from a middle-class neighborhood holding officer positions in two organizations responded positively, mentioning the importance of friendships and the willingness to seek new experiences: “You have to get yourself into stuff . . . [it is about] just kind of throwing yourself headfirst and finding what you’re passionate about and pursuing it.”
Another student, a 20 year-old self-identified Mexican-American female interdisciplinary studies major, asked about her experience transitioning from high school to college notes, said, It was easy [laughs]. I don’t feel that I had any issues. . . . I also took part of [an orientation session for first-generation students] [that] I really liked and I feel like that helped a lot! Well I am kind of more of like well I want to explore on my own like I will do it on my own.
The navigational capital of students is also observed in the way they learn the advantages of being in college. A woman who did not speak of any racial or ethnic identity saliency
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discusses her future goals of getting a master’s degree and majoring in luxury products and fashion management. She says that she would have never thought about it until she participated in study abroad programs. She continues, [Coming to MU] wasn’t just to study here but it has opened so many doors for me. I am so happy for it that I wouldn’t change it for the world, you know? I mean yeah you are paying for it but then again if you are paying for it something that is making you happy than it is so worth it. It is an investment, it is not an expense.
Multiple layers of constraint stemming from race and class simultaneously affect student integration into institutions of schooling and academic performance. Steele’s (1997) work on stereotype threat documents how the internalization of negative stereotypes about one’s group—whether based on race or gender—affect performance. Multiple spheres of privilege and disenfranchisement simultaneously affect student experience and attainment. Thus, we cannot single out class as a sole or predominant factor in student achievement levels. To do so would be to disregard the analytic tools and insights of intersectional approaches to the interpretation of data.
Resistant Capital
Most of the time, student maneuvering of academic spaces meets obstacles. As other research has shown, Latina/o students have to manage economic constraints, as well as limited literacy in the exchange of the normative cultural capital necessary in higher education. Furthermore, students in our sample also confront the social construction of Latinas/os as other and are pressured to legitimate their presence in higher education. Throughout the analysis, however, we identify resistant capital among the students, as when a 24-year-old Mexican female student spoke to us about community response to her acceptance at MU: I used to be a waitress in this small town where I was raised and there was a bunch of Whites and when they found out that I got accepted . . . they used to like be like or ask me like how did you manage to do that? . . . at first I didn’t understand like why are people so rude.
These negative perceptions of Latinas/os can motivate. In fact, students in the sample mention how they want to change perceptions of Latinas/os. They discuss learning more about their own culture and the role that it has played in U.S. history in Latina/o studies classes and from faculty members of color who provide inclusive content. When asked if there had been a change in his ethnic or racial identification over time, a male student who self-identifies as Latino said, I think so. When I came to [MU], I didn’t really think about it much, but then um actually I got interested in a fraternity . . . a Latino fraternity so . . . I learned what it means to be a Latino you know and pan Americanism . . . it is a great experience and I think a big factor in [MU] in my experience here.
An inclusive curriculum validates Latina/o contributions to American society, empowering Latina/o students and generating pride in Latina/o heritage. Additionally, we see evidence of the value of counterspaces that support students “by furthering their own knowledge about their racial or ethnic groups . . . and/or by developing friendships with people who share their cultural heritages” (Ayala and Chalupa 2016). Student responses highlight how “proving people wrong” (i.e., resistant capital) through their own racial and/or ethnic awakening or empowerment (i.e., racial and/or ethnic empowerment capital) feeds aspirational capital.
Racial and/or Ethnic Empowerment Capital
Analysis of student responses led us to identify an additional type of community cultural wealth that we call racial and/or ethnic empowerment capital. Racial and/or ethnic empowerment capital refers to the sense of pride that students feel by being members of their racial and/or ethnic group. In some cases, students come to MU with a racially and ethnically empowered identity. For example, when asked how a dark-skinned self-identified Puerto Rican woman feels about being Puerto Rican, a student answers, I would definitely say that it is something that makes me unique and makes me who I am. . . . Like I love being [Puerto Rican] . . . I probably have a little more pride then maybe most people. I have a big Puerto Rican flag in my room hanging over my bed . . . it is a big part of who I am. . . . I guess that is probably why I would never lie about it, because I have too much orgullo [laughs] for it.
In another instance when we asked a self-identified Mexican how she felt about being Mexican at MU, she says, Prideful, definitely prideful . . . I just feel really proud. I just love what we stand for when it comes to our values and our traditions. It is something that I have been brought up with, and any time I think about it, I get really proud. Before, it wasn’t as much . . . it was just harder for me, but now I live my life reflecting back on who it is or where I come from, and never to let go of it because nothing can separate you from that.
As mentioned in our discussion of resistant capital, this racial and/or ethnic awareness and empowerment can develop in school. Regardless, this type of capital drives students to reconstruct the meaning of “Latina/o” by emphasizing the value of their unique positionality as members of their racial and/or ethnic group in the United States, as well as at MU. This type of capital contributes to students’ claiming of space as well as asserting their cultural citizenship (Flores-González 1999).
In the analysis, we also identify racial and/or ethnic empowerment capital in student narratives of resistance to negative stereotypes and assertion of the right to higher education. When asked what shapes the importance of her racial and ethnic identities at any given point, a self-identified Latina and American female student from a middle-class neighborhood says, When you are not with a huge group of Latinos, like my friends are predominately White, you realize how crazy stereotypes can be or how like, what you do and how your family is just a little bit quirky compared to other ones and you love it and then here [MU] you realize how . . . like, how that kind of gets wiped away with other people, I guess. Even in the jobs that I am looking for it is, Oh you are Latina, you are multicultural and we need more people and more diversity and so you realize how being a minority can also give you a stepping stone.
The student feels a sense of empowerment in a multicultural world. Additionally, her response speaks to fluidity among the different types of community cultural wealth, especially the nonrigid boundaries between racial and/or ethnic empowerment, and social and navigational capital. Moreover, the previous quotation highlights how relationships with non-Latinas/os provide a window into dominant views of Latinas/os. When asked what she believed has been most beneficial about being a Mexican student at MU, the student associates her broad perspective with her Latina/o identity: “You see things differently; you don’t see things in such a narrow way. You approach things from different angles.” Throughout, students reference forms of community cultural wealth that serve them well in higher education.
Policy Suggestions
The project of reconstructing Latina/o university student presence from a perspective of wealth will take a long time. At its base is institutional validation of the resources students bring with them, the critical community cultural wealth that ushers many Latina/o students toward success. Development and implementation of inclusive curricula as a central mission of the university would be a profound and impactful action institutionalizing recognition of community wealth. The absence of Latina/o content in the curriculum sends a powerful message of disregard and exclusion and there has been little work to document the positive benefits of ethnic studies classes and programs in regard to student retention, persistence, and graduation (see Nuñez 2011). But we can say that these programs nurture racial and ethnic pride grounded in intellectual inquiry, which can birth a sense of racial and/or ethnic empowerment that functions as another form of community cultural wealth. Latina/o students who possess an empowered view of their racial and/or ethnic group, identifying and using the cultural capital circulating among group members, are more likely to persist and attain a college education. For higher education administrators, recognizing Latinas/os’ racial and/or ethnic identities as an asset is a step toward transforming the academy and its existing hierarchies and ideologies.
When our student respondents mention special programs, we might assume that such special programs are fulfilling their function. But the numbers tell a different story, and the need for special programs proves the persistence of inequality. Furthermore, special programs are often isolated from the central administrative and curricular work of university. This siloization of academics and student services perpetuate inequities in knowledge production that contribute directly to Latina/o educational underachievement. The continuous inscribing of White/European cultural and scientific work as the sole legitimate focus for intellectual inquiry—even as higher education institutions presumably work to rectify achievement differentials across racial/ethnic groups through admissions and student affairs—diminishes all that it excludes.
Thus, we echo the recommendation of Hopkins et al. (2013) that curricula must be delivered through caring pedagogy by administrators, faculty members, and staff members invested in student success. We add to this the necessity of course content educating about Latina/o contributions to art, literature, and science. Institutional support for Latina/o students should uncover, underscore, and elevate Latina/o epistemologies that empower agency and develop leadership among Latina/o students, which in turn promotes and maintains aspirational and navigational capital (Hopkins et al. 2013). This content, furthermore, acknowledges Latina/o racial and/or ethnic empowerment capital, and, in time, will affect K–12 education and begin transforming Latina/o relationships to education at a much earlier point in schooling.
Our identification of a new kind of community cultural wealth, racial and ethnic empowerment, arises from observations of the sustaining, motivating impact of racial and/or ethnic pride in the students we interviewed. Our combined 30 years of experience teaching Latina/o and Chicana/o courses to Latina/o and Chicana/o students tells us that the classes can be transformative, reorienting some in relation to their identities, providing additional data for cultural confidence that already exists in others. Moreover, structures must be set in place that direct and connect Latina/o students to institutional agents that recognize Latina/o community cultural wealth. On the basis of our findings, we suggest that a multidimensional institutional approach, grounded in a respect for Latina/o community cultural wealth and implemented through the curriculum and student affairs, will fuel Latina/o student persistence and attainment. Latinas/os, however, should not be expected to rely upon the exceptional act of institutional blessing to find success, and U.S. educational curricula must include Latina/o art, history, and literature, regardless. We know that many Latina/o students achieve academically in difficult, even hostile, higher education environments because of the capital they bring with them to the institution. It just should not be this hard.