Transnational Imaginaries and College: The Experiences of Immigrant Youth in the Global City

• In Event: Transnationalism, Immigrants, and Schooling: Perspectives on College Pathways

Abstract

This paper explores how low income immigrant students who are English learners negotiate the transition from high school to college in New York City. Low-income newly arrived immigrant youth face linguistic, cultural, political, economic and institutional challenges that limit their access to and persistence within post-secondary education. As young people coming of age in a global city, our participants face an economic landscape in which the majority of jobs either require an advanced education or are in the low-wage service economy (Sassen, 2006, 2012; Anyon, 2005). Although previous generations of immigrants in urban centers might have been able to achieve social mobility without a college education, today, a college degree is key to ensuring that young people are not trapped in low wage service jobs (Louie 2005, Carnevale & Rose, 2011, Oreopoulos & Salvanes, 2009). While global cities put low-income immigrant youth in vulnerable economic positions, they also offer new “political potentialities,” in the form of transnational identities and communities (Sassen, 2012). The youth in our study negotiate their educational trajectories through their understandings of the political economy of the global city. Significantly, some of our participants express multiple attachments to the US and to native countries reflecting what scholars call a “diaspora consciousness”. In this paper we explore how these youth construct “transnational imaginaries” through their pursuit of higher education.
This paper draws on data from a longitudinal qualitative study that follows two cohorts of recently arrived immigrant students from high school through their first year of college. Our sample includes low-income, newcomer immigrant students who come from diverse ethnic, linguistic, religious, and racial backgrounds and also students who are undocumented. Our paper explores the way our participants’ “transnational imaginaries” framed their plans for college. For example, a young Haitian woman reported that she plans to pursue a college degree in a health field so that someday she can return to Haiti to share what she has learned to build nursing homes in Haiti. Similarly, a young woman from Senegal plans to pursue studies in agriculture so that she will be able to obtain jobs in the US or in Senegal where there is need for people with expertise in agriculture. Thus, our work explores how students’ transnational imaginaries influence their decision making about college and their futures. The questions addressed in our paper are: How do students’ transnational imaginaries inform their college plans? Do their transnational imaginaries play a protective role in helping young people to navigate hardships on the road to college? How do students’ transnational plans change as they move through college?
While there is a large body of research that focuses on the challenges faced by low-income first generation college students, our research contributes to a growing literature on the experiences of newcomer immigrant students as they navigate college. Furthermore, our research highlights the linkages between transnational connections, future aspirations and higher education for immigrant youth.

Authors

• Stacey J. Lee, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Reva Jaffe-Walter, University of Wisconsin