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ISSN: 1066-5684 print / 1547-3457 online DOI: 10.1080/10665681003666304 Linguistic Minority Students in Higher Education: Using, Resisting, and Negotiating Multiple Labels Maria Veronica Oropeza and Manka M. Varghese University of Washington Yasuko Kanno Downloaded By: [University of Washington] At: 23:18 14 May 2010 Temple University Linguistic minority students have been both under-researched and underserved in the context of research on minority students’ access to and retention in higher education. The labels ascribed to them have typically failed to capture the complexity of their identities. Additionally, much of the literature in higher education on minority students’ access and retention has focused on structural barriers rather than on how students negotiate these barriers. By bringing linguistic minority students into the forefront of this conversation, we show how four linguistic minority female students draw on their community cultural wealth and different forms of capital (Yosso, 2005) to access and navigate college while experiencing differing advantages and disadvantages based on institutional labeling. By employing critical race theory and its conceptualization of capital, we illustrate how students use, resist, and negotiate labels in attempts to access resources and services at a four-year institution. We conclude by calling for more research on this population as well as additive university practices and policies that reflect the richness of linguistic minority student identities. Equity of access for students in higher education in the United States has been typically defined in terms of class and race (Bowen, Kurzweil, Tobin, & Pichler, 2005; Gándara, Orfield, & Horn, 2006; Levine & Nidiffer, 1996). When linguistic minority students have been included in such discussions, they have been incorporated primarily in terms of race, immigration status, socioeconomic status, and to a lesser extent, language (Bosher & Rowekamp, 1998; Hernandez, 2002; Hurtado, Milem, Clayton-Pederson, & Allen, 1998; Kao & Tienda, 1995; Louie, 2007; Portes & Rumbaut, 1996; Portes & Zhou, 1993). This has been particularly problematic since the labels associated with them, including “English Language Learner” (ELL) or “immigrant,” do not address the complex needs and social realities of these students as a distinct category of people (Bosher & Rowekamp, 1998; Harklau, 1998). Also, the literature and scholarship in minority students’ access to and retention in college has focused almost exclusively on structural barriers experienced by these students, rather than on how these students address those barriers (Deil-Amen & Turley, 2007; Louie, 2007). We acknowledge and thank Sarah Grosik for her careful copyediting of this article. Address correspondence to Manka M. Varghese, University of Washington, College of Education, P.O. Box 353600, Seattle, WA 98195-3600. E-mail: mankav@u.washington.edu LINGUISTIC MINORITY STUDENTS IN HIGHER EDUCATION 217 This study aims to achieve two major goals: (1) to insert linguistic minority students into conversations about equity of access to higher education by providing rich and complex pictures of their multiple identities and (2) to illustrate how these students successfully transition to college, and then navigate within college, by drawing on the different forms of capital they possess. Specifically, we focus on how linguistic minority students negotiate the labels ascribed to them and the services related to these labels by using various forms of capital. Downloaded By: [University of Washington] At: 23:18 14 May 2010 DEFINITIONS In order to recognize and protect linguistic minorities in a similar way to other minorities in the world, the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted the Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities (Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, 1992). Drawing on this declaration, we define “linguistic minority students” in the United States as students who are immigrants (not international students), speak a primary language other than English at home, and who can be discriminated against on the basis of being a nonnative speaker of English. A subset of linguistic minority students are institutionally labeled as ELLs when their English proficiency is judged to be limited and they receive English as a Second Language (ESL) services in school. Although these two terms are often conflated in the literature, we make a distinction between linguistic minority students and ELLs since not all linguistic minority students are judged to have limited English proficiency. However, it is important to note at the outset that even when linguistic minority students are not designated as ELLs and do not receive ESL services, they can still be stigmatized because they have received these services in the past or simply because their first language is not English. Also, linguistic minority students are often immigrants, racial minorities, and from low-income backgrounds (Suarez-Orozco & Suarez-Orozco, 2001). The complexity of how these students are categorized and the consequences of such categorizations in postsecondary institutions make the examination of their assigned labels and the way they negotiate these labels critical. The major purpose of this study, therefore, is to examine and show how linguistic minority students use, resist, and negotiate institutional labels by utilizing their community cultural wealth and different forms of capital (Yosso, 2005). These forms of capital will be explained more fully in the theoretical framework. LINGUISTIC MINORITY STUDENTS AND ELLs IN HIGHER EDUCATION The foreign-born population in the United States stands at about 34 million, making up 12% of the population, which is the highest it has been in 80 years (U.S. Census Bureau, 2004). Most of this population is now from Latin America and Asia. About one-fifth of the school-aged population is composed of either immigrants or children of immigrants (Suarez-Orozco & SuarezOrozco, 2001). Of these immigrant children, an estimated 5.2 million are ELLs, representing approximately 10.5% of the total public school enrollment (National Clearinghouse for English Acquisition and Language Instruction Educational Programs, 2006). Thus, linguistic minority students represent a growing but understudied population in the pipeline to higher education (Callahan, Wilkinson, Muller, & Frisco, 2009; Harklau, 1998). 218 OROPEZA ET AL. Much of the literature around linguistic minority students has focused on ELLs, especially in the discussion of their transition to postsecondary education. Therefore, the present literature review also centers on studies that examine ELLs. Downloaded By: [University of Washington] At: 23:18 14 May 2010 Transition from High School to College Research on ELLs’ access to higher education has been limited. Applied linguists have examined various aspects of ELLs’ linguistic and literacy experiences as well as their experience with university-level writing/composition programs (e.g., Harklau, Losey, & Siegal, 1999; Leki, 2001, 2007; Leki & Carson, 1997; Roberge, Siegal, & Harklau, 2009; Spack, 1997; Zamel, 1995). In this line of research, ELLs have been studied mainly regarding their linguistic challenges in college (Callahan, 2005). This has meant that scholarly work has left relatively untouched the question of how other nonlinguistic factors, such as academic preparation, tracking, race, and socioeconomic status might affect ELLs’ access to and persistence in postsecondary education (Callahan, 2005; Callahan et al., 2009). Labels Bennici and Strang (1995) point out that the label, ELL, is in fact a composite of many different identities, each of which is likely to mark a student as “different” in the college setting: “Being LEP [Limited English Proficient] as a high school-age youth in this country generally means you are also poorer, older, and more likely to be from a [racial] minority group than youth who are Native English or Other LM [language minority]” (p. 33). Colleges across the country have different policies and requirements in terms of English proficiency (Williams, 1995). Thus, some linguistic minority students find themselves no longer designated as ELLs in college, while others find themselves re-designated as ELLs after having long been exited from the ESL program in the K-12 setting. Regardless of the ELL designation, however, linguistic minority students may still be labeled and stigmatized in different ways. The often amalgamated and marked labels for linguistic minority students makes these labels, and the resources associated with them, even more important to examine. A number of these students may or may not access services because they are categorized in different ways in different contexts and also because the students may or may not accept these labels, and therefore the services associated with these labels. Two studies by Harklau (1999, 2000) are particularly relevant to the present study. These studies focused on ELL immigrants’ transition from high school to college and how they experienced the labels and categories given to them. Harklau (2000) examined how the ascribed identities of a group of ELL students changed from that of the “good kids” to the “worst” as they moved from high school to college. In high school, “immigrant ELL” was generally a positive label with connotations such as “hardworking” and “the model minority;” in the community college, however, immigrant ELLs were compared with the academically better prepared and more compliant international ELLs and were consequently perceived by college ESL instructors as rebels and underachievers. Harklau’s (1999) study of these students’ transition to higher education also highlighted the contradictions of how they were represented in Educational Opportunity Programs (EOPs). She points out that even though the mission of EOPs is to serve—both academically LINGUISTIC MINORITY STUDENTS IN HIGHER EDUCATION 219 and socially—traditionally underrepresented student populations in college, the programs tend to have an “othering” effect for such students, accentuating their linguistic and cultural diversity in deficit terms. Downloaded By: [University of Washington] At: 23:18 14 May 2010 CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK: COMMUNITY CULTURAL WEALTH AND FORMS OF CAPITAL THROUGH THE LENS OF CRITICAL RACE THEORY For the theoretical framework of the study, we employ the notion of “capital” but one seen through the lens of critical race theory (CRT) (Yosso, 2005). In brief, a CRT perspective centers around the experiences of people of color and challenges the normativeness of white, middleclass values. Yosso (2005) defines CRT in education as “a theoretical and analytical framework that challenges the ways race and racism impact educational structures, practices and discourses” (p. 74). CRT argues that people from disenfranchised groups are systemically prevented from accessing resources that can help them succeed (Delgado & Stefancic, 2001). However, CRT also highlights the importance of minorities’ agency. Although different researchers use the concept of capital in overlapping but slightly different ways, the theorist most closely associated with the original concept is Bourdieu (1977, 1986; Bourdieu & Passeron, 1990). Naming different kinds of capital reminds us that what confers power to an individual is not simply her economic wealth but also other resources such as her education and her personal network of people. The concept of “cultural capital” is particularly central to Bourdieu’s theory of cultural reproduction, which explains the role of school education in the reproduction of societal inequality. Bourdieu argues that schools unfairly privilege children of the dominant social class by taking their knowledge, skills, and dispositions—cultural capital—as the norm and treating all children as if they had equal access to such cultural capital. By taking a CRT perspective, Yosso (2005) takes inspiration from Bourdieu’s conceptualization of cultural capital but at the same time is critical of how this concept has been used. She points out that the way Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital has been used to discuss the underachievement of students of color tends to cast such students as “deficient,” as it highlights how they fall short of the white, middle-class “standard.” Yosso writes, “While Bourdieu’s work sought to provide a structural critique of social and cultural reproduction, his theory of cultural capital has been used to assert that some communities are culturally wealthy while others are culturally poor” (p. 76). Yosso counters such deficit views of minority students and their communities by asserting, “Are there forms of cultural capital that marginalized groups bring to the table that traditional cultural capital theory does not recognize or value? CRT answers, yes” (pp. 76–77). In her endeavor to emphasize what she calls “community cultural wealth,” (p. 69) valuable resources possessed by communities of color, Yosso (2005) names six forms of capital that together comprise such community resources: aspirational, navigational, social, resistant, familial, and linguistic capital. Drawing from Yosso, we define each of these forms of capital briefly here: Aspirational capital refers to the ability to sustain high aspirations even when one’s circumstances make them seem impossible to achieve, such as parents who want better opportunities for their children even when they experience significant barriers to instantiate such opportunities. Navigational capital concerns the skills to navigate through social institutions, particularly institutions that systemically disadvantage minority participants. Such capital consist of a combination of Downloaded By: [University of Washington] At: 23:18 14 May 2010 220 OROPEZA ET AL. an individuals’ inner strength and the social networks they access to overcome a hostile environment. Social capital refers to the networks of people to whom minority students can turn to obtain information, emotional support, and access to key institutional personnel, such as those who may help students with the college application process. Resistant capital highlights minority individuals’ ability to challenge the status quo by resisting negative stereotypes and labels and claiming counter identities of their own. An example of this includes families that specifically teach their children about institutional and structural racism while teaching them how to counteract the effects of this through valuing themselves. Familial capital refers to the knowledge built up through ties to kin, including emotional and moral learning; for instance, the “funds of knowledge” (Vélez-Ibáñez & Greenberg, 1992, p. 313) that students and their families bring to educational settings. Finally, linguistic capital refers to the communication skills accrued by multilingual communities of color, as when children use their bilingual skills to act as translators for their parents. Although we make a distinction among these different kinds of capital, in reality, the boundary between some of these forms of capital is not clear-cut. Also, as in Bourdieu’s (1986) conceptualization of capital, one form of capital can often been converted into another. In this study, we use these six overlapping forms of capital to analyze the ways in which linguistic minority students navigate the labels and categories assigned to them by educational institutions. Looking at forms of capital through a CRT lens not only allows us to recognize the system that keeps linguistic minority students in a subordinate position overall but also accounts for agency among individual students to utilize these forms of capital. THE STUDY: FOUR LINGUISTIC MINORITY STUDENTS AT UNIVERSITY This study focuses on the labels attributed to four linguistic minority undergraduate students and how they access, resist, and negotiate resources through these labels by drawing on forms of capital at a university. The data were collected as part of a larger qualitative and interview-based (Denzin & Lincoln, 2000) research project examining linguistic minority students’ perspectives on their transition to university and their experiences there. The students for the larger project were recruited from Northern Green University,1 a major research university with an undergraduate student body of over 27,000. Like most other large universities serving diverse populations, Northern Green University makes a variety of services and resources available to its students. Campus life includes student organizations related to different interests. Several writing and tutoring centers are located on campus to assist with students’ academic studies. Also, the EOP provides academic, financial, and personal counseling and support as well as tutoring to underrepresented minority, first-generation-college, and/or low-income students; hence, it serves a number of linguistic minority students. The linguistic minority students who were recruited for the larger study had to meet the following three criteria. First, they had to be newly enrolled as either first-year or transfer students at Northern Green University. Second, they had to be permanent residents or U.S. citizens, not international students. Third, they had to have attended a U.S. school (K-12 and/or community college) prior to attending Northern Green University. Using these criteria, in the Fall of 2006 we recruited students in two types of college English courses: (1) remedial ESL classes for non-U.S. citizen linguistic minorities offered by the campus Downloaded By: [University of Washington] At: 23:18 14 May 2010 LINGUISTIC MINORITY STUDENTS IN HIGHER EDUCATION 221 ESL Center (see next paragraph) and (2) freshman composition classes for basic writers in which a number of linguistic minority students who are U.S. citizens are enrolled. Northern Green University imposes the English language proficiency requirement on all students who are non-U.S. citizens (including permanent residents). Noncitizens must provide evidence of their English proficiency by standardized test scores such as TOEFL or the SAT verbal score, and if their score falls short of the university requirement, they are required to take up to five remedial, tuition-based and non-credit-bearing ESL classes offered by the ESL Center. U.S. citizens, on the other hand, regardless of their language background, are not subject to such requirements. We initially recruited interview volunteers in the remedial ESL and freshman composition classes by distributing a survey. The survey questionnaire asked background questions about ethnicity, first language, age of arrival in the United States, parental education level, immigration status, and financial aid status. After eliminating students who did not fulfill the study’s selection criteria, we ultimately interviewed 33 students. Although this study drew on a pool of volunteers, we had a richly heterogeneous group of students in terms of gender (12 males and 21 females), countries of origin (17), students who came directly from high school (19) and communitycollege-transfer students (14), and income level (17 receiving Pell Grants). However, only one student (Elena), who is included in this study, was enrolled in the freshman composition course rather than the ESL courses. We believe that the reason that only one student volunteered from this course is that in the context of a freshman composition class, being a linguistic minority carries a stigma and students did not want to identify themselves as such. Each interview lasted 60–90 minutes and focused on students’ background, issues around language, high school experiences, the college application process, and college experiences. All of the student interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed fully, and qualitatively analyzed. We first coded the data for salient themes across participants using Atlas-ti, a qualitative software package. Open coding was used initially to identify parts of the data related to the context of Northern Green University, the participants’ ways of thinking about the application process, on-campus activities, classes, relationships with peers and instructors, and the social structure (Attinasi, 1993). At the next level of analysis, codes were modified and clustered together around the focus of this study: the labels ascribed to the students (e.g., commuter student); the labels that students associated with themselves (e.g., Asian or multilingual); the match and mismatch between the self-ascribed and other-ascribed labels; and the kinds of capital they used to access, resist, and negotiate such labels. The use of interviews, especially when focused on the way the students talked about themselves and their experiences, is very much aligned with the CRT perspective and the value it places on the emic perspectives of minorities by using methods such as narrative and storytelling (Solórzano, 1998). The four students that we focus on here were chosen for several reasons. First, since this paper examines how different students were given particular labels and how they used, negotiated, and resisted such labels differently, we chose four students based on maximum sample variation (Patton, 1990) of divergent backgrounds in terms of race, heritage, age of arrival, years of schooling in the United States, and socioeconomic status. Moreover, we also chose students who exhibited the six forms of capital in varying ways and degrees. These four students were all women, and they talked more expansively about most of these different forms of capital than the men that we interviewed. We now provide snapshots of these students (see also Table 1). Downloaded By: [University of Washington] At: 23:18 14 May 2010 222 TABLE 1 Participant Profiles Elena Backgrounds National Origin Age of Arrival Length of Residence Citizenship Academic Preparation College Preparation College Support Years Studying English Prior to Arriving in U.S. Prior to University Jenny Shila Mickey Russia 8 8 US Citizen China 14 5 Chinese citizen—Permanent Resident Iran 18 2 1/2 Iranian citizen—Refugee Somalia/Kenya 14 6 Somali Citizen—Permanent Resident 2 IB courses EOP 4 AP courses Remedial ESL 2 yrs. CC Remedial ESL 3 Honors, 1 AP courses Remedial ESL 3 yrs. middle school 1 1/2 yrs. HS 6 yrs. middle/HS 1 ESL course at CC 8 yrs. Elementary/middle school None. Not placed in ESL Remedial ESL Remedial ESL Remedial ESL M-Entrepreneur F-Entrepreneur M-HS China M-Accountant F-Sales Associate Dept. Store M-MBA from U.S. M-Teacher w/refugees F-Computer support M-HS F-HS China F-College Iran F-HS None 3 yrs. elementary/middle school ESL at Northern Green University None but in college English class Social Class Parents’ Occupation M-Accountant F-Custodian Parents’ Education M-College Russia, 2 yr. degree U.S. F-College Russia Note: IB = International Baccalaureate; AP = Advanced Placement; CC = Community College; EOP = Educational Opportunity Program; ESL = English as a Second Language; HS = high school; M = mother; F = father. LINGUISTIC MINORITY STUDENTS IN HIGHER EDUCATION 223 Downloaded By: [University of Washington] At: 23:18 14 May 2010 Elena Elena was born in Russia. Her parents are college educated, and she and her family became U.S. citizens before she entered Northern Green University; hence, Elena was not required to take any ESL course at the university. Elena came with her family when she was ten years old and had no English language instruction prior to arriving in the U.S. She received ESL instruction for two years and then her family moved to an area where the middle school did not have ESL; she received no further ESL instruction. Elena speaks Russian at home. In the United States, Elena’s father works as a custodian and her mother, who has an associate’s degree from a community college, works as an accountant. Elena’s older sister was a student at the same community college her mother had attended. Elena received information about college and assistance with the application from a mentor whom she met through a state scholarship program. At Northern Green, Elena was enrolled in the freshman composition class. Jenny Jenny was born in China and came to the U.S. to visit with her family several times before immigrating. Her family came to the U.S. to set up a business when she was 14. Jenny received two years of English instruction in middle school prior to coming to the U.S and upon arrival she tested into the lowest ESL level in her high school. She received ESL instruction for a year and a half in high school before being mainstreamed. At home she speaks a Chinese dialect with her family. Jenny’s parents did not go to college because of the Cultural Revolution, but they own a successful business in China, and Jenny’s American high school provided her with a lot of information about college. At Northern Green University Jenny was required to take remedial ESL courses. Shila Shila emigrated from Iran at age 18 with her younger sister and parents as refugees. Her older sister is a U.S. citizen and works as a pharmacist in New York. Her mother received an MBA from a U.S. university and had always dreamed about returning to the U.S. Her father attended college in Iran and both he and Shila’s mother speak English. Shila started learning English in the eighth grade in Iran and took one ESL course at a community college upon her arrival in the U.S. She attended two community colleges before transferring to Northern Green. Both her sister and a community college instructor were instrumental in helping Shila navigate the college application and transfer processes. Shila was required to take remedial ESL courses at Northern Green. Mickey Mickey is a Somali who was raised in Kenya and came to the U.S. with her mother and siblings at age 14. They joined Mickey’s father, who had immigrated to the U.S. two years earlier. Mickey’s 224 OROPEZA ET AL. parents completed high school and had strong English skills prior to immigrating. Mickey’s father works in information technology and her mother works as a teacher with refugees. Mickey completed seventh grade in Kenya and had eight years of English language instruction before coming to the United States. Mickey also attended summer school in the U.S. the summer before entering eight grade, which she said aided her transition. Mickey did not participate in ESL instruction in school in the U.S. She learned about resources for college from her school counselor and through a university minority outreach program. Mickey was also required to take remedial ESL courses at Northern Green. Downloaded By: [University of Washington] At: 23:18 14 May 2010 FINDINGS: NEGOTIATING LABELS AND ACCESSING RESOURCES THROUGH FORMS OF CAPITAL The findings in this study illustrate how the four students addressed different labels that were given to them by drawing on their community cultural wealth and different forms of capital. Since this study focuses on both students’ transitions from high school to college and their experiences in college, we discuss both in our findings. Aspirational and Familial Capital According to Yosso (2005), aspirational capital is extending what is possible or dreaming beyond one’s present circumstances, “even in the face of real and perceived barriers” (p. 77). College aspirations were a common theme among linguistic minority students in this study: They talked about going to college as their responsibility, their duty, or hope. For Shila and Mickey, a major source of aspirational capital came from the self-ascribed immigrant identity and comparisons of their experiences in their countries of origin with those in the U.S. Consistent with the literature on first-generation immigrants, these students believed that the U.S. offered more opportunities than their home country (Ogbu, & Simons, 1998; SuarezOrozco & Suarez-Orozco, 1995, 2001). Shila associated being a woman living in the U.S. with increased freedom and social mobility: So for us living in Iran and me being a woman [and a religious minority], there are not very many opportunities open to you. You cannot be as outgoing, as like Muslims or men. So you’re limited to certain jobs, opportunities, or yeah, this kind of stuff. For me especially, I really like it that I am here. Similarly, the immigrant label also influenced how Mickey perceived her likelihood for social mobility in the U.S. She reported that in Kenya, most students’ education stops at eighth grade, and those students who continue and receive a degree face challenges because the weak economy cannot pay professionals what they are worth. On the other hand, as an African immigrant living in the United States, Mickey expected the structural barriers to be removed: “Here was actually much more beneficial; one thing is you get aid from the government.” Family was another major source of aspirational capital. Elena talked about how expectations to go to college are very strongly connected to her family: “It’s like a responsibility that we have to do. Our parents raise us this way.” Mickey, Shila, and Jenny also mentioned their families as being instrumental in expecting them and pushing them to think about college. Mickey, above LINGUISTIC MINORITY STUDENTS IN HIGHER EDUCATION 225 all, explicitly and repeatedly talked about her father being “the one who actually inspired us all.” Similarly, as an Asian immigrant, Jenny saw it as part of her responsibility to attend, not just any college, but a prestigious four-year institution, because one of the main reasons for her parents’ decision to immigrate to the U.S. was to give her a better education. She said, “Asian people I know they have high expectations for their kids to go to well-known prestigious, you know, academy.” Thus in this small sample, aspirational capital was strongly connected to familial capital. Downloaded By: [University of Washington] At: 23:18 14 May 2010 Social and Navigational Capital The four students in this study did not attend particularly college-focused high schools; however they were able to make use of different forms of social capital to help them navigate their way to college. Jenny and Shila used family and community members (a Chinese friend, and a sister, respectively) to gain information about the college application process, converting their social capital directly into navigational capital. Elena and Mickey, on the other hand, acquired mentors in high school. Elena attended a high school in which most of the students were working-class or poor. Consequently, her information about college was limited. While her relationship with her high school counselor was generally good, it focused on class selection. However, in this high school Elena was labeled as what Flores-González (2002) calls a “school kid”; that is, Elena was encouraged to explore college opportunities, had support from teachers and peers, and most importantly was “recognized” as a school kid. It is through this recognition that she found out about a prestigious state scholarship that assigned her a mentor: “I actually wasn’t even planning to go to a four-year college, I was planning to go to [a community college] like my sister did. But when I got this scholarship, they started talking to me about how it’s really good to go to a university,” she said. Mickey’s experience was initially the opposite of Elena’s. Despite having good grades and never needing to take ESL courses in high school, the label of being a racial and linguistic minority student contributed to an assumption that she “won’t be able to handle” honors classes. Mickey was initially unaware that high schools had resources and people to help students who are interested in pursuing college. But once she became aware of the resources, she was determined to make full use of them: So, . . . in high school . . . I didn’t know they had a scholarship, what is it called? A counselor. . . . I didn’t know that stuff until I was in my junior year of high school. That’s when I realized that all this information was available to me, and that’s when I started making use of it. I went to my counselor and said, “Hi, my name is Mickey. I don’t believe you met me before, but you have been my counselor for two years. But anyway, we are going to be friends now.” [laughs] Mickey’s case illustrates how she sought to re-negotiate her invisibility, which was strongly related to the aspirational capital she had developed through her family. She talked at length about how she worked to develop a rapport with her counselor before she asked her for help. She wanted the counselor to be familiar with her and her “story.” Mickey’s strategy helped her learn about the college process through a minority college outreach program, and subsequently she applied for more than 20 scholarships. Mickey’s high school counselor thus ultimately provided her with contacts and resources to obtain the information needed to pursue college. This particular Downloaded By: [University of Washington] At: 23:18 14 May 2010 226 OROPEZA ET AL. finding also confirms the significance of institutional agents in conferring navigational capital to students. Mickey’s strategic approach to her counselor was particularly notable since research suggests that minority students tend to self-eliminate from or resist the help of institutional agents, even though they are the ones who could use such help the most (Stanton-Salazar, 1997, 2001; Stanton-Salazar, Chávez, & Tai, 2001; Stanton-Salazar & Dornbusch, 1995). Once in college, different levels of navigational capital were afforded to students depending on various labels assigned to them. For instance, a community-college-transfer student brought greater navigational capital than a commuter student. Shila and Jenny were both commuter students. However, it was through her identity as a transfer student that Shila gained the navigational capital that Jenny, as a non-transfer student, could not access. Specifically, Shila took a course designed for transfer students to become familiar with resources available within the university. In this course, she found out about the writing centers and career services and became connected to other students in her field of study. Armed with substantial navigational capital, Shila felt a strong sense of connection to the university community despite her two-hour commute each way by bus. In contrast, Jenny also tried to develop a sense of belonging by joining a sorority and the Chinese Student Association but, at the time of our interview, had been unable to develop a peer group. With no formal structure in place, Jenny had trouble developing her navigational capital on campus. As previously mentioned, Jenny, Shila, and Mickey were required to take remedial ESL courses due to their being noncitizens who failed to meet the university’s English proficiency standards. These classes did not seem to help them that much in acquiring navigational capital as some other services on campus did, such as EOP, and at the same time, they were forced to pay extra tuition for them and had to attend a class every day. This is because the ESL courses focused entirely on the development of students’ academic literacy skills. On the other hand, Elena and Mickey were enrolled in the EOP because they were institutionally designated as “disadvantaged students.” Elena was considered disadvantaged because she was a low-income and first-generation-college student while Mickey was so considered because she was a racial minority and also a low-income student. As EOP members, these two students had access to tutoring services, a counselor, and a general advising center to which they could go to ask any navigational questions—although as we discuss in the next section, for different reasons neither of them fully utilized the resources available through the EOP. Linguistic Capital All four students discussed their multilingualism during the interviews. Elena mentioned Russian being her strongest language; Shila discussed her sound knowledge of Farsi and Arabic; Jenny is able to speak Chengdu (her native Chinese language) and Mandarin; and Mickey has a strong grasp of Somali and Swahili and a basic knowledge of Arabic and Spanish. Their ability and use of their native languages assisted and also underlined their strong connections to their families—all of the students used their native languages, sometimes mixed with English, to communicate and forge bonds with their families. In other words, for these four students, linguistic capital and familial capital are strongly related. Strong bonds with their families, in turn, helped our participants gain other kinds of capital, such as aspiration and navigational capital, which were critical to their pathway to college. Shila, for example, spoke of her close relationship with her Downloaded By: [University of Washington] At: 23:18 14 May 2010 LINGUISTIC MINORITY STUDENTS IN HIGHER EDUCATION 227 relatives with whom she speaks Farsi. She particularly identified her older sister, who had already started attending college before her, as instrumental in gaining navigational capital: “She knew more than me. She could help.” It was with the advice of her sister that Shila made a strategic choice to attend a community college first, so that she had time to improve her English in a small, supportive community before venturing into a more academically competitive four-year institution. On the other hand, the students did not perceive their multilingualism as carrying much value within the university; rather, it was their lack of linguistic capital—being linguistic minorities—that was accentuated in their pathway to and through college. Three of the four students discussed the disadvantages associated with being an ELL. Mickey highlighted the disadvantage of having less access to information: “The biggest problem is that [ELLs] are not informed of things. Because most of the people here, they grow up with the system.” Jenny and Shila, on the other hand, believed that it was primarily the lack of familiarity with U.S. culture and English that constituted major barriers to ELLs’ access to educational opportunities. It is important to note that even someone like Shila who was multilingual, had strong family support, and felt informed enough to map out her pathway to a four-year institution very strategically, still felt limited in the kinds of programs to which she could realistically aspire because of her ELL status. Of the four participants, Elena downplayed ELLs’ disadvantages the most. She argued that except for students who arrive in the U.S. just before college, being an ELL did not constitute an obstacle to reaching college: “I personally think that, um, well, I think it’s true for people who just came to Northern Green, but not for people who lived here for a while—like three years or four years—as long as you have the money to pay for college, it’s not an issue.” We believe that it is not a coincidence that Elena was also the only white student in this study. When comparing Elena with the other three students, it is clear that linguistic minority students, such as Elena, who are phenotypically white, benefit from their Whiteness. Taylor (2006) discusses the experience of Nico, a white immigrant student from Serbia, who participated in an antidiscrimination leadership program that the researcher organized in Canada. Nico, too, benefitted from being white in gaining social acceptance in his adoptive country: “Being European cannot guarantee him White status; however, it does Whiten him in comparison with non-European immigrant language learners whose experiences of exclusion so shockingly diverge from his own” (p. 536). The white status means that Elena was not necessarily labeled as a “foreigner,” and when she was recognized as a foreigner, people would not immediately dismiss her because of her accented English. This is obviously not the case for the students of color in this study. Resistant Capital In this section we describe how the four students have resisted some of the labels ascribed to them by the institution. Both Shila and Jenny resisted the label of ELL especially in the context of the university. There were two reasons for their resistance. The first was the extra tuition (approximately $1,000 per course) they were required to pay in order to attend the mandatory remedial ESL courses. In her interview, Jenny angrily dismissed the value of the ESL class: “I just didn’t think it was necessary for me to take it. It was a waste of my parents’ and my money to, you know, to take that class.” Jenny and Shila also explicitly criticized the injustice of the Downloaded By: [University of Washington] At: 23:18 14 May 2010 228 OROPEZA ET AL. system that required only noncitizens to take the ESL courses. Shila provided an example of her sister, whose English was not as good as hers, but “she didn’t have to take any ESL” because she was a citizen. Elena, on the other hand, resisted both the label of ELL and low-income student. As a lowincome student, Elena was placed in the EOP but did not take advantage of the services or opportunities because she rejected the institutional positioning of her as disadvantaged. She repeatedly emphasized that she did not suffer from any additional difficulties as a result of being a linguistic minority or low-income student. She argued, “I don’t find anything difficult. I think all classes that I take, they are as challenging to me as to the other students who are American. So I wouldn’t think that there is any more challenge I guess than other students.” She added that she was “not even sure” why she was enrolled in the EOP. Since it was not her own decision to enroll, Elena did not make active use of the services associated with the program. Elena’s case shows that services that construct students in what are perceived to be deficit labels may end up leading students to resist such labels, thus excluding the very students they wish to serve. The following story that Mickey related is a telling example of the difficulties linguistic minority students encounter when the institution gives them multiple labels and the kind of services available to them are contingent upon these labels. When Mickey went to see an advisor in the EOP office to ask some questions, the advisor asked whether she was an ESL student. Mickey did not know how to answer because she had never taken an ESL course in high school. The counselor then checked her SAT verbal score and told her that she probably had ESL requirements, and that if she was an ESL student, her office could not advise her. But Mickey did not budge and noted that she “just kept asking her—’why, why, why?’ “ This caused the advisor to check her records again and on a second perusal, she noticed that Mickey was in fact a recipient of the Diversity Scholars Award, a Northern Green scholarship given to high-achieving underrepresented minority freshman students. When Mickey confirmed that she was indeed a Diversity Scholar, the advisor told her that, in that case, the EOP office was able to help her after all. This example illustrates the complex ways in which a university makes certain services available to some categories of students but not to others and the confusion both students and the staff experience in navigating the system. In one instant, Mickey was not viewed as eligible for a particular service because she was an ESL student; in the next instant, the same service was revealed to be available to her because she was also a Diversity Scholar. The story also shows the negative impact that the denial of support services in this manner can have on the student. When she was told that she could not receive advising through this office, Mickey’s initial reaction was, “Just because my English is not good enough, I am not worthy of being advised.” Of all the 33 students we interviewed, Mickey was among the most tenacious and articulate. But not all linguistic minority students have her resistant capital to hold court and refuse to take no for an answer. In short, all four students resisted certain labels that were ascribed to them. Mickey directly confronted an EOP advisor when she was categorized as an ELL and consequently was denied the service she felt was her due. Elena refused to engage in a program that defined her in the deficit terms with which she did not identify. Shila and Jenny questioned the fairness of their having to pay for mandatory ESL remedial classes. Their resistance to certain labels sometimes led to their accessing resources that they would have otherwise been denied, such as the advising in the EOP office that Mickey insisted on receiving. However, in other cases, their resistance rendered ineffective the services that the university offered specifically for the purpose of supporting underrepresented students. LINGUISTIC MINORITY STUDENTS IN HIGHER EDUCATION 229 Downloaded By: [University of Washington] At: 23:18 14 May 2010 CONCLUSION This study sheds an important light on how linguistic minority students access and navigate higher education. It demonstrates that one illuminating way to view and understand issues of equity in accessing postsecondary education is to look at the labels students are given and the categories into which students are placed. These labels and categories influence not only how the students are viewed but also the specific services that are made available to them. Past research (Harklau, 1999, 2000) has also shown how linguistic minority students in college are given multiple labels—labels that connote deficits in the context of college—and how, depending on which label is used in a given context, different deficits are highlighted. This study confirms and extends these findings. By relating these assigned labels to forms of capital, this study helps explain how these categorizations contributed to the students’ difficulties: Sometimes, the label did not carry capital (e.g., Jenny as a commuter student), or the label was incongruent with how the students understood themselves (e.g., Elena as a disadvantaged student); other times, multiple labels on the same student were seen as mutually-exclusive and one label denied access to the resources that another label conferred (e.g., Mickey as either an ELL or a Diversity Scholar). The CRT perspective employed in this study also highlights the agency that linguistic minority students exercise in making use of the community wealth and forms of capital at their disposal. All four students expressed the importance of aspirational capital in pursuing higher education and connected it to their familial capital. They also possessed or developed social capital through their family or by negotiating the labels and categorizations that they were given in high school, which had helped them gain entry into Northern Green. On the other hand, these four students varied in their success in accessing navigational capital in college, depending on the labels ascribed to them and the resources/services associated with those labels, as well as the students’ willingness to accept such labels. 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ESL composition program administration in the United States. Journal of Second Language Writing, 4(2), 157–179. Yosso, T. J. (2005). Whose culture has capital? A critical race theory discussion of community cultural wealth. Race, Ethnicity and Education, 8(1), 69–91. Zamel, V. (1995). Strangers in academia: The experiences of faculty and ESL students across the curriculum. College Composition and Communication, 46(3), 506–521. Maria Veronica Oropeza is a doctoral candidate in Language, Literacy, and Culture in the College of Education at the University of Washington and an assistant dean of Intercultural Programs at Marquette University. She is a scholar practitioner who examines the intersectionality of race/ethnicity and gender in higher education. Manka M. Varghese is an assistant professor in Language, Literacy, and Culture in the College of Education at the University of Washington. Her research and teaching focus on language teacher education, language teacher identity, and language minority students’ pathways to postsecondary education. Yasuko Kanno is associate professor of TESOL in the College of Education, Temple University. She conducts both qualitative and quantitative studies on language minority students’ access to and success in higher education.