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.

Understanding the motivation behind the success of first generation college students

“…The interactions with individuals who served as mentors to the FGC students gave them another source of personal connection to benefits associated with building a foundation of support. Oikonomidoy (2015) confirmed research about the benefits of mentorship and the connection to additional research from authors such as Fischer (2007) that pinpointed awareness to the values of FGC students needing to have a community of support to thrive in the collegiate environment.…”

“…Glass, Gesing, Hales, and Cong (2017) asserted that FGC students were at an academic disadvantage compared to their peers because of the lack of support for and awareness about the student population from faculty. Soria and Stebleton's (2012) research demonstrated that FGC students did not inherently possess the same levels of social capital, which is the ability to understand and use social networks for personal gain (Oikonomidoy, 2015) to assist with navigating the college environment. FGC students may have had difficulty connecting with faculty because they were intimidated and had no models for how to approach instructors (Willamson, Goosen, & Gonzalez, Jr., 2014).…”

“…Social Capital-Social capital is the value of social networks and connecting people of similar ideologies, but also bridging the gaps between the diversity of people with the respect of acceptance (Oikonomidoy, 2015).…”

“…Gibbons and Woodside (2012) also shared that students of color and individuals from low-income backgrounds found that mentors played a key role in helping them cope with the transition to college, especially at predominantly white institutions (PWI). Oikonomidoy (2015) expressed that natural mentors are individuals who are non-parental adults, such as counselors, teachers and coaches. Positively, mentors typically shared personal characteristics and backgrounds with their mentees.…”

“…It became much more important for FGC students who identified a mentor that not only managed to thrive in college, but also navigated PWI institutions of higher education and more easily compared situations and counter-perceived negative messages from faculty and peers (Hurd, Albright, Wittrup, Negrete & Billingsley, 2017) Underrepresented racial and ethnic groups and students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds demonstrated high impact benefits from the natural mentoring relationship (Oikonomidoy, 2015). Hurd, Tan and Loeb (2016) suggested that these mentoring relationships foster psychological resilience when the students are faced with adversity during their educational journey.…”