“We Need to Help Each Other Out”: How Latine and Asian American Families Cultivate Sibling Educational Support (Poster 12)

• In Event: AERA Promising Scholarship in Education Research: Dissertation Fellows and Their Research

Abstract

How families generate and transmit educational resources is a central topic of social inequality research. Scholars have focused this research primarily on parent-child exchanges and often overlook the agentic role of siblings in producing educational resources for families. Drawing on 70 interviews with Latine and Asian American first-generation college students and their siblings, I analyze how families cultivate sibling educational support and how race/ethnicity shape sibling educational exchanges. I argue that Latine and Asian American siblings function as consequential producers of educational resources that bolster familial capital in first-generation families through a process, I term reinforced familial support. Reinforced familial support involves (1) parents’ emphasis on sibling solidarity and encouragement of educational help-seeking practices which, in turn, (2) promotes sibling reliance to navigate the educational system. Sibling educational support includes navigating high school environments, the college application process, and navigating college environments. Additionally, I find sibling educational support functions similarly between Latine and Asian American families despite differences in cultural context. These similarities underscore the salience of siblings in first-generation college trajectories as sources of educational support. I advance our understanding of familial capital by developing the undertheorized salience and interconnectedness of sibling social ties within Latine and Asian American family structures. The educational contributions of siblings in families raises questions on the construction and reproduction of social inequality.

Author

• Estefani Marin, Lawrence University