Anchoring comunidad: how first- and continuing-generation Latinx students in STEM engage community cultural wealth

Abstract

Using a phenomenological approach, we interviewed 16 Latinx college students pursuing STEM degrees at four Northeastern universities to explore the forms of capital that first- and continuing-generation Latinx students use as they enter and navigate postsecondary STEM pathways. Findings suggest that both first- and continuing-generation Latinx students in STEM entered college with community cultural wealth (CCW). Unlike their first-generation peers, however, continuing-generation Latinx students also entered their institutions with traditional (i.e. Bourdieuian) forms of capital. Students who entered college utilizing CCW, however, engaged various ‘moves’ or acts of resistance in response to the incongruence between these forms of capital and their institution’s values and expectations. In this way, students’ ‘moves’ became ways of resisting postsecondary spaces.