Sociocultural Boundary Formations in College Life and Intercultural Capital Development

Abstract

Based on selective findings from a qualitative study with first generation college students, this article presents the contradictory and complex ways in which the participants perceived sociocultural diversity on campus and their place within it. The students’ narratives both affirmed existing boundaries of social belonging based on the conventional categories of race, ethnicity, and social class and transcended them. Cross-border alliances were being built on campus at the same time that new boundaries were forming in unconscious ways. The discussion focuses on the implications of this study for intercultural capital development.