Social Responsibilities and Collective Contribution in the Lives of Immigrant-Origin College Students

Immigrant-origin college students (those who have immigrated to the US and those who are children of immigrants) are a growing population. Currently, a third of all college-age young people in the US are first- or second-generation immigrants (Rumbaut & Komaie, 2010). Despite their growing numbers, very little attention has been paid to their experiences during this developmental phase. Classic developmental theory suggests that this time of life, referred to as Emerging Adulthood, is characterized as a time of self-focus and ambivalence toward adult status for young people in post-industrialized nations (Arnett, 2006). For many immigrant-origin students, however, their experiences of this time of life can vary significantly from the native-born population (Katsiaficas, Suarez-Orozco & Dias, 2014). Arriving to diverse college settings (Teranishi, Suarez-Orozco & Suarez-Orozco, 2011) immigrant-origin students often struggle to define themselves as they contend with acculturating to mainstream values and norms while simultaneously maintaining a sense of home cultural values such as family interdependence (Tseng, 2004). Furthermore, there are significant increases in levels of family obligation values (Fuligni & Pedersen, 2002) as well as community engagement (Flanagan & Levine, 2010) during this developmental period. How both of these types of social responsibilities (Wray-Lake & Syvertsen, 2011) are experienced in the lives of immigrant-origin students has hereto been understudied. This mixed-methods dissertation addresses these gaps in the literature through three iterative studies that utilized both a sequential embedded and multiphase design (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2011). Study 1 explores, through mixed-methods, how immigrant-origin community college students (N = 645) identify and achieve criteria of adulthood. Findings suggest multiple responsibilities are key during this phase of life as young adults form their identities. Next, Study 2 quantitatively examines profiles of engagement in family and community responsibilities through cluster analysis with (N = 488) first- and second-generation immigrant community college students. Qualitative case studies contextualizing each cluster profile provide insight into how these social responsibilities are experienced in the lives of students. Lastly, Study 3 examines quantitative trends of engaging in social responsibilities with a national sample of undocumented Latino college students (N = 797). Qualitative portraits from a participatory action research project utilizing verbal (interview) and visual (family-map) narratives of undocumented college students in California provide a deeper understanding of the value of "collective contribution" in undocumented students' lives. Taken together, these three studies have implications for understanding and supporting immigrant-origin students in the various college contexts they are embedded within.