“Mamá en inglés se dice ‘pre-med’”: bilingual Mexican-origin first-generation college undergraduates aspiring for medical careers

Abstract

ABSTRACT Drawing on thirty pláticas with fifteen Mexican-origin premedical students enrolled at a large research university along the U.S./Mexico border region, we examine the strategies these young women use to persist in a heavily white and Asian dominant field where they are severely underrepresented. Our analysis underscores three main themes: 1) Language brokering; 2) Lack of Latina faculty representation limits social capital and; 3) Reliance on peers and Latinx centered organizations. We find that premedical Latinas, most of whom are of Mexican heritage in California, harness the bilingual language capital they accumulated in their childhoods as a valuable asset to gain access to opportunities in medicine, but have difficulty developing the necessary social capital networks in institutions of higher education with faculty. As a result, they turn to peer networks and Latinx ethnic organizations that serve as a bulwark from institutionalized discrimination and a means of developing the necessary social capital to persist.