Challenging Racialized Burdens: Financial Aid Experiences of First-Generation, Low-Income Latinx Students in California (Poster 27)

• In Event: AERA Poster Session Friday 11:45am
  In Invited Poster Session: AERA Promising Scholarship in Education Research: Dissertation Fellows and Their Research Poster Session

Abstract

This study investigates how first-generation, low-income Latinx students face racialized barriers in the financial aid process and leverage cultural capital to overcome these challenges. Using Racialized Administrative Burden theory and the Community Cultural Wealth framework, I analyze 34 semi-structured interviews with students in California's public 2- and 4-year institutions. Preliminary findings show that racialized burdens—encompassing learning, compliance, and psychological costs—diminish students' agency and perpetuate unequal distribution of resources. Despite these obstacles, students utilize navigational, familial, linguistic, and social capital to navigate and persist through financial aid processes. Understanding the racialized barriers embedded in the ecosystem of financial assistance and the cultural capital students employ to counter them can help improve financial aid policies and processes for historically excluded students.

Author

• Jaime Ramirez-Mendoza, University of California - Davis