Is the Bronx in the House? An Inquiry of “Capital” and the College Transition of Latino Males

• In Event: Employing a Community Cultural Wealth Framework to Analyze the Complexities of Latina/o Educational Attainment

Abstract

Latino males are underrepresented on college campuses and in college classrooms across the country (Saenz and Ponjuan, 2009), but there are many Latino students who continuously make a successful transition to college. This paper will tell the story of how a cohort of 10 Latino male students from the Bronx, New York, made their transition from high school to college.

Two theoretical perspectives, Bourdieu’s (1990) framework of practice and Yosso’s (2005) notion of community cultural wealth (CCW), will be utilized to understand how Latino male students successfully transition from high school to college. Bourdieu’s theory of practice analyzes the dialectical relationship of each of his three “theoretical technologies,” which he identifies as habitus, capital, and field in an attempt to investigate and explain an individual’s social practice. Bourdieu argued that these theoretical technologies simultaneously interacted with and in opposition to each other, producing an agent’s social practice.

Bourdieu defined field as the social structures in which individuals operate within on a daily basis. These structures produce and have been produced by and within a historical context, which in turn develops an individual’s dispositions or habitus. An individual’s habitus guides how they interact with the field, what Bourdieu (1990) called a “feel for the game” (p.66). Within each field are various forms of capital (i.e. economic, social, cultural and symbolic) which agents struggle to accumulate and control. Individuals will engage a field differently accordingly to the capital they have accumulated, and their dispositions. Though Bourdieu identified and defined various forms of “capital”, he noted that fields define what is perceived as valuable and exchangeable capital. Students functioned within various fields (i.e., family, school, community), which produced a disposition about college as they made their transition. Each field defined and valued various forms of capital, which students attempted to accumulate.

In her discussion of CCW, Yosso (2005) calls for an expansion of what scholars and researchers identify as “valuable” capital, especially when examining communities of color. This study will attempt to continue Yosso’s dialogue of identifying various forms of “capital” students of color possess and accumulate while they transition from high school to college. Students within this study were successful in activating and utilizing aspirational, navigational and social capital in their transitions.

The research question guiding this study is “How do Latino male students from the Bronx navigate their transition from high school to college and what do these students’ identify as necessary capital when making their college transition?” Data was collected over the period of a year and a half, beginning during the second semester of the students’ senior year in high school and continuing through the end of their first full year at their respective postsecondary institution. Data collection took place in the form of a one-to-one interview or focus groups and followed a semi-structured format. This research aims to extend and also identify new forms of capital when studying males of color and education by utilizing both Yosso’s CCW framework and Bourdieu’s notion of practice.

Author

• Alejandro E. Carrion, CUNY - Graduate Center