Hope communication as a predictor of documented and undocumented Latina/o high school students’ college intentions across an academic year

ABSTRACT

Drawing from hope theory, we examined whether hope communication predicted undocumented and documented U.S. Latina/o youth’s college intentions across an academic year. With three waves of survey data from 172 documented and 253 undocumented Latina/o high school students, auto-regressive cross-lagged analyses revealed that parent, teacher, and friend hope communication at the beginning of the year indirectly increased students’ college intentions by the end of the year. A trend emerged whereby undocumented students reported significantly less hope communication and weaker college intentions than documented students within most of the waves. Our findings suggest that hope communication has the potential to increase the educational, economic, and social mobility of Latina/o immigrant students by increasing their intentions to attend college.

KEYWORDS:

• Undocumented
• immigrants
• hope
• college
• Latino
• cross-lagged model

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Cinthia Chicas, Daisy Figueroa, Hannah Gunter, Lyndsi Ibarra, Celine Jeremiah, Roselia Mendez Murillo, Debora Pérez Torres, and Rachyl Pines who assisted in this study’s data collection and data entry. We are also grateful to the school administrators and students who contributed to this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Jennifer A. Kam (Ph.D., Pennsylvania State University) studies psychological, interpersonal communication, and individual action-oriented processes that contribute to immigrant youth's resilience and thriving, particularly when faced with stressors related to immigration and ethnic identification.

Andy J. Merolla (Ph.D., The Ohio State University) studies communication in social and personal relationships with emphasis on how people overcome personal and relational challenges through interpersonal communication.

Notes

1. Undocumented immigrants are non-U.S. citizens or non-U.S. nationals who arrive in the U.S.: (a) without authorization or (b) with authorization but remain in the U.S. after no longer having authorization (Internal Revenue Service, 27 August 2017). Currently, most undocumented immigrants come from Mexico, followed by Central American countries, Asian, South American, European and Canada, Caribbean, African, and Middle Eastern, respectively (Passel & Cohn, 2017).

Additional information

Funding

This project was supported by two internal grants that were awarded to the first author: the University of California, Santa Barbara’s Institute for Social, Behavioral and Economic Research Social Science Research Grant and the Academic Faculty Senate’s Pearl Chase Grant.