How Student-Parent Expectations About College and Mobility Matter for First-Generation Experience and Outcomes

• In Event: 3544 - Culture, Social Psychology, and Education

Abstract

Drawing on in-depth interviews and participant observation with 150 students attending elite colleges and universities in four major US cities, I argue that first-generation and low-income students experience a consequential double bind in their college careers. Their ability to be a student in these elite settings demonstrates their dedication and commitment to social mobility – often motivated by their desire to be able to give back to their families and lower-resourced communities. Yet, as they progress in college, they must balance personal and social transformations that college can bring with their histories and ties to home. Unlike their classmates from more privileged backgrounds, these students must simultaneously “buy in” to the elite educational context without “selling out.” Navigating this double bind often disrupts student trajectories and negatively impacts outcomes, campus engagement, and ties to home communities. Paying attention to the power of social beliefs and relational ties reveals that upward mobility is best understood as an experiential and longitudinal social process in which student experience “becoming” upwardly mobile as a social and interactional process with many possible trajectories and outcomes – that must be considered alongside conventional notions of economic gain when approaching questions of social mobility.

Author

• Melissa Osborne, Western Washington University