Getting there and staying in: first-generation indigenous students’ educational pathways into Chilean higher education

Abstract

Drawing on a total of 26 life history interviews with indigenous students in higher education, the article examines the role of activating valued resources and personal strategies to navigate unequal pathways into higher education. In Chile, the historical inequalities for indigenous people’s access to higher education are beginning to be reverted, but these changes misrecognize ongoing disadvantages in regard to experiencing university life. Selection choices regarding the institution and course are based on restricted information sources and prior knowledge, whilst the capital required to succeed is heavily biased toward higher socioeconomic backgrounds. This notwithstanding, students’ transitions into higher education are marked by spontaneous adaptations to work routines, managing crises, and the activation of other resources for ‘staying in’. Emphasis is placed on the resilience expressed by these young people, as the first-generation from their families to access higher education, to negotiate cumulative disadvantages from low-quality educational establishments and poverty.

Keywords:

• Higher education
• Indigenous
• Chile
• social capital
• habitus

Notes

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Macarena Sepulveda for her invaluable contribution to the research project, and to each of the interviewees for gifting their time and biographies. I thank the Millennium Nucleus for the Study of the Life Course and Vulnerability (MLIV) for their institutional support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors

Notes

1 The Mapuche are the largest indigenous group in Chile (approximately 85%, 7.7% of the national population [CASEN 2013]), and suffer some of the lowest levels of literacy, employment, family income, life expectancy and health in the country (see Piñones & Valenzuela 2017).

2 Though clearly there are few alternatives for inquiring into subjective, lived events of the past

3 We found little difference between these approaches, in terms of interviewee responsiveness, giving reason to continue working individually (primarily the research assistant) in view of time limitations.

4 See Page (2014) for a similar approach to analysing life narratives.

5 I include a pseudonym, the person’s age and a general reference to their higher education studies and institution after each citation

6 Nor does the sample represent the countless individuals sharing their same socioeconomic and ethnic status who viewed education as “impossible”, in Bourdieu and Passeron’s terminology, who never applied, or dropped out of higher education.

7 This issue is further discussed in a separate paper.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Center for Intercultural and Indigenous Research (CIIR) under [Grant FONDAP 15110006]