Patchwork capital and postsecondary success: Latinx students from high school to college

Abstract

ABSTRACT In scholarly conversations of college readiness, the academic performance of Latinx students largely hinges on questions of culture. College success necessitates fluency in dominant cultural capital and community cultural wealth. Inner-city high schools, however, inadequately endow Latinx students with dominant cultural capital and are often subtractive of community cultural wealth. Nonetheless, many Latinx college students are enjoying academic success. To understand how Latinx students from inner-city high schools are succeeding in college in spite of insufficient preparation, I introduce the concept of ‘patchwork capital’ grounded in interviews and observations of twelve Latinx students from high school to college. As opposed to middle- and upper-class students who seamlessly apply robust collections of college-ready capital to postsecondary transitions, low-income, Latinx students adopt a more piecemeal approach. Through scattered experiences in and out of school, Latinx students produce a patchwork of dominant and nondominant cultural resources, tenuously assembled and applied towards college success.