| This dissertation presents a study of four first-generation, immigrant college students at a nonselective, urban college. These students' stories of academic success and failure intersect with and diverge from the dominant narrative of education as a pathway to middle-class professions. The students profiled in this dissertation, two men and two women, often struggle with economic and vocational anxiety as they seek college credentials. The impact of gender, race, class, and immigrant status crosses the borders of their separate experiences to help explain the material conditions in which they strive to improve their lives and the lives of their families. To examine the dynamics of their academic and vocational outcomes, this dissertation draws from critical social theory that embeds individual experiences in a broad context of race, gender, and class inequality in the US. To discuss these students' literate backgrounds and their college experiences as readers and writers, this dissertation is also informed by research in the field of Composition and Rhetoric, particularly the sub-field of basic writing, a contentious practice that goes back at least forty years. While closely following four basic writers, this dissertation also explores the methodological and theoretical questions raised by ethnography, case study method, and critical discourse analysis and proposes some orientations for future research into the relationship between non-selective higher education and upward mobility. |
