Critical Importance of Emphasising Working-Class Parents in Digital Inclusion: A US Latino/a Case Study

Abstract

In this article, we draw on extensive qualitative data to analyse the specific case of a digital inclusion program launched by the non-profit organisation River City Youth Foundation, located in Central Texas. The case is particularly interesting because the organisation, which is primarily a youth centre, realised they needed to start including parents in their programs in order to achieve their first and foremost institutional goal: to increase the number of low-income youth in US colleges. For this study, we use Pierre Bourdieu’s theories of capital to analyse how the organisation integrates education in their digital inclusion program—called ¡TechComunidad! — and thus how they instil techno-dispositions and cultural capital about how US education works in parents of children in kindergarten to 12th grade (K-12). This case is also relevant because it is related to a specific community of low-income Latino immigrants, mostly of Mexican descent, who live in a neighbourhood, where most of the residents are Hispanic. The ¡TechComunidad! program may take between six and eight weeks, and at the end of the training, grants participants a Chromebook – a laptop with a Google OS that only works with internet connectivity. Our results suggest that the organisation managed to instil techno-dispositions and knowledge of education, but parents may still face other sorts of divides, once they bring their Chromebook home.