Accessing Resistance Capital: First-generation Latina/o/x College Students in Higher Education

ABSTRACT

Centered in critical race theory (Latcrit) and conceptualization of community cultural wealth, this study explores first-generation Latina/o/x students’ motivations to attend college and persist to degree completion. Additionally, this study examines the overlapping forms of cultural wealth that participants access throughout their educational journeys, with particular focus on the overlap of resistance, familial, and aspirational capital. Finally, this project examines how citizenship status impacts participants’ motivations and cultural wealth. Data was gathered through semi-structured interviews of 14 California university or community college students who self-identified as Latina/o/x. Findings indicate that participants’ motivations are deeply connected to familial relationships that also lead to broader understandings of social inequity and injustice. Specifically, participants situate their motivations to attend college within personal aspiration, and familial ties, but also resistance to dominant cultural stereotypes and systemic gender, race, and class oppression. Additionally, findings indicate that citizenship status impacts how students articulate broader social inequities, but that participants, regardless of citizenship status, utilize resistance capital to persist toward degree completion.

KEYWORDS:

• First-generation college students
• community cultural wealth
• Latina/o/x
• resistance capital
• Latcrit

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Dr. Ann Strahm for her assistance in participant recruitment and interviewing.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.