TY - JOUR
T1 - Drops in the Ocean
T2 - Rooted Academic Identities and Transformational Resistance in a College Assistance Migrant Program
AU - O’Connor, Brendan H.
AU - Mancinas, Oscar
AU - Troxel Deeg, Megan
N1 - Funding Information:
Across the United States, the College Assistance Migrant Program (CAMP) provides almost 2,500 migrant students each year access to a college education with funding from the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Migrant Education (National HEP CAMP Association, ). Through CAMP, students from migrant or seasonal farmworker families – i.e., those who work in farming, fishing, or logging – receive assistance during the first year of college to support them in adapting to university life. Migrant and seasonal farmworker families in Arizona are economically disadvantaged, with annual incomes of $17,500-$19,999, while the average yearly in-state cost of attending one of Arizona’s public universities is $25,255. Over 10,000 Arizona K-12 students were identified as coming from migrant families in 2014–15. These students are more likely to come from families with incomes below the federal poverty level and around 24% are designated as English language learners. Arizona migrant students face additional difficulties associated with their families’ livelihoods: they often experience disruption in their education when their families move, which can lead to missing significant amounts of class time and missing or performing poorly on standardized tests. As a result, they tend to be around a year and a half behind in the curriculum (Arizona State University, School of Transborder Studies, ).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.
PY - 2023
Y1 - 2023
N2 - This qualitative study investigated the experiences of first- and second-year migrant undergraduate students and staff in the College Assistance Migrant Program (CAMP) at Arizona State University (ASU). ASU CAMP, which started in 2016, is the first program of its kind at an Arizona public university. Using an ethnographic monitoring approach, a research team that included a faculty member and graduate and undergraduate students conducted observations in a variety of CAMP settings, along with interviews and document analysis, in order to examine how Mexican-origin CAMP scholars developed academic identities rooted in family and community strengths while resisting assimilation to the “foreign land” of the university. We theorize students’ academic identity development and staff’s efforts to support and advocate for them as a form of transformational resistance through which participants acknowledged the inequities and challenges facing migrant students in postsecondary education and began to “reinvent” the university as they confronted this reality. The findings are relevant to scholars, teachers, and others who work with migrant students in K-12 and postsecondary settings, as well as those who seek to support Latinx and first-generation college students’ academic identity development in culturally sustaining ways.
AB - This qualitative study investigated the experiences of first- and second-year migrant undergraduate students and staff in the College Assistance Migrant Program (CAMP) at Arizona State University (ASU). ASU CAMP, which started in 2016, is the first program of its kind at an Arizona public university. Using an ethnographic monitoring approach, a research team that included a faculty member and graduate and undergraduate students conducted observations in a variety of CAMP settings, along with interviews and document analysis, in order to examine how Mexican-origin CAMP scholars developed academic identities rooted in family and community strengths while resisting assimilation to the “foreign land” of the university. We theorize students’ academic identity development and staff’s efforts to support and advocate for them as a form of transformational resistance through which participants acknowledged the inequities and challenges facing migrant students in postsecondary education and began to “reinvent” the university as they confronted this reality. The findings are relevant to scholars, teachers, and others who work with migrant students in K-12 and postsecondary settings, as well as those who seek to support Latinx and first-generation college students’ academic identity development in culturally sustaining ways.
KW - College assistance migrant program (CAMP)
KW - Latinx students
KW - Mexican-American students
KW - academic identity
KW - college access
KW - funds of knowledge
KW - migrant education
KW - postsecondary and higher education
KW - resistance
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85087166888&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85087166888&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/15348431.2020.1783267
DO - 10.1080/15348431.2020.1783267
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85087166888
SN - 1534-8431
VL - 22
SP - 438
EP - 453
JO - Journal of Latinos and Education
JF - Journal of Latinos and Education
IS - 2
ER -