First Generation Latine Students’ Use of Community Cultural Wealth in the Transition to University Education

ABSTRACT

This study uses the Community Cultural Wealth (CCW) paradigm to describe the experiences of ten first-generation Latine students who transitioned from high school to a four-year Hispanic- Serving Institution. It enhances our comprehension of these learners’ educational journeys by centering their descriptions of challenges faced in the transition process and how they used their CCW to address and overcome those challenges. Findings indicate that students utilized all six types of cultural capital that comprise CCW, though social capital emerged as central. Relationships with both school personnel and extended family members provided access to the skills and resources necessary to complete the transition process and increased participants’ aspirational capital. Familial support in the form of encouragement to persist led to greater aspirational capital and assisted students in overcoming self-doubt. The use of linguistic capital was closely linked to resistant capital and students’ desires to disrupt racist and sexist social structures affecting themselves and their communities. The importance of cultural capital in the transition to higher education indicates the need for university administrators, faculty, and staff to understand and nurture first-generation Latine learners’ CCW as a step toward serving them more successfully.

KEYWORDS:

• Cultural capital
• first-generation college student
• Latine
• college transition

Acknowledgments

The author wishes to thank Drs. Chalane Lechuga and Shaun Schafer for their support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 I am choosing to use the term Latine, rather than Latino, to avoid the binary and sexist perspective implied in the latter. Also, since study participants self-identified as Mexican, Mexican American, Chicana, Latina, Latino, and Latine, I believe “Latine” is the most inclusive term in this context.

² For this research, it is assumed that the transition process begins with what Hernandez (2015) calls college choice or “the process in which students go about realizing their postsecondary educational aspirations” (p. 203).

³ The approval number issued by CU’s Institutional Review Board is MSU IRB − 2024-34.

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded by a grant from the Attainment Network [#090358].