This qualitative dissertation examined the role that mothers play in the educational success of Mexicana/Chicana working-class first-generation college students. Research has shown that Mexicana/Chicana mothers are integral to the educational achievement of their daughters, however few studies have explained why, or outlined specifically what it is that they do to inculcate educational success (Gándara, 1982, 1995, Gándara et al., 2013). Using Chicana/Latina feminist theory (Delgado Bernal & Elenes, 2011), this study explored the teaching and learning practices between Mexicana/Chicana immigrant working-class mothers and their first-generation college daughters. I focused on 10 mother-daughter dyads from Los Angeles County. The majority of the mothers are immigrants from México with an average of an elementary school education. Nine of the daughters are enrolled in Ph.D. programs in Los Angeles and one is an assistant professor at a local university. I facilitated 30 pláticas: 10 pláticas with the mothers, 10 pláticas with the daughters, and 10 mother-daughter pláticas. Additionally, I conducted 18 home visits, collected photographs and personal items, and kept a journal for self-reflexivity. I analyzed the data using modified grounded theory (Calderon, 2008; Malagón, Pérez-Huber, & Velez, 2009) with a Chicana/Latina feminist sensibility to generate theory from their lived experiences. During my analysis, I recognized the ways systems of oppression impact the lives of Women of Color. When preliminary themes were identified, I shared them with the mothers and daughters in the mother-daughter pláticas to discuss analysis, receive feedback, and engage in a collaborative data analysis process. Following this, I engaged in a final analysis stage where concluding themes were identified. My findings show that Mexicana/Chicana mothers use a pedagogy of the borderlands to raise muxeres truchas. A pedagogy of the borderlands encompasses the creative, defying, and empowering ways in which Mexicana/Chicana immigrant working-class mothers raise their daughters. It uses a bodymindspirit approach to instill a conocimiento of how to navigate, thrive in, and transform the physical and metaphorical borders that inform the everyday lives of Mexicanas/Chicanas. It is grounded in the epistemologies and ways of being of Mexicana/Chicana mothers and used to raise muxeres truchas. These are women who embody a unique form of intelligence of how to live in the world and transform it as Women of Color. Implications for this study point to the importance of improving the connection between Mexicana/Chicana mothers, daughters and schools, particularly for families of first-generation college students, reframing how we understand and measure success and achievement in schools, and the significance of continuing to develop Chicana/Latina feminist pedagogies and methodologies.

The post-1970s U.S. economy is characterized by stagnant wages and a transition to “financialized” profitability—the growing tendency for financial and non-financial firms to depend on financial profits. The same global and domestic politics that liberated flows of capital also opened credit to a broader consumer base. Credit dependency since the 1970s served the triple function of maintaining profitability by sustaining consumption in the context of unequal wage distributions, generating profit from financial services and new forms of financial classification, and obscuring inequality by creating an illusion of wealth disconnected from wages. After an exploration of the transition to credit-dependant profitability and consumption, I situate the housing bubble and the rise to prominence of the mortgage as a financial instrument in this profitability fix. I focus on the social dynamics that enabled the American home to become the value-carrying asset that justified low-wage credit dependency and temporarily quelled the negative effects of rising inequality.

Segmented assimilation theorists posit that second generation immigrants today are at risk of downward acculturation and socio-economic mobility, and that dense co-ethnic communities provide the greatest resistance. Drawing upon data from ethnographic interviews and non-participant observation at a Pentecostal church, this paper will suggest that American-origin religious institutions may provide shelter against downward mobility through ‘religious optimism’. Using a race-gender framework to explain exit from gang lifestyle and acculturation into a group promoting mainstream American values, this paper will suggest that religious optimism may sometimes be infused with traditions from the black Protestant church, as well as inner-city stylistic expressions. Therefore, the first suggestion in this paper is that the segmented assimilation paradigm should not dichotomize the values of immigrant groups against those of native-born blacks and Latinos. The second suggestion in this paper is that segmented assimilation theorists should take into consideration that trajectories may shift in adulthood.

Ms. Flores wrote her senior thesis in History on one aspect of 1940’s federal irrigation regulation in California’s Central Valley. She describes how the Valley’s largest landowners were able to use the Central Valley Project to their own advantage, despite the intentions of the United States Bureau of Reclamation, which was managing the project. Ms. Flores used many different types of sources, including congressional hearings and reports, newspaper archives, and the Bancroft Library’s Paul S. Taylor Papers, among others. Kathryn Eigen, Ms. Flores’ thesis advisor, wrote that “Christina has never been satisfied with merely recounting events. Instead, she has worked and reworked her arguments to make them as clear as possible and to make the best use of the materials that she has found.”

Segmented assimilation theorists posit that second generation immigrants today are at risk of downward acculturation and socio-economic mobility, and that dense co-ethnic communities provide the greatest resistance. Drawing upon data from ethnographic interviews and non-participant observation at a Pentecostal church, this paper will suggest that American-origin religious institutions may provide shelter against downward mobility through ‘religious optimism’. Using a race-gender framework to explain exit from gang lifestyle and acculturation into a group promoting mainstream American values, this paper will suggest that religious optimism may sometimes be infused with traditions from the black Protestant church, as well as inner-city stylistic expressions. Therefore, the first suggestion in this paper is that the segmented assimilation paradigm should not dichotomize the values of immigrant groups against those of native-born blacks and Latinos. The second suggestion in this paper is that segmented assimilation theorists should take into consideration that trajectories may shift in adulthood.

An intervention on neoliberal-centric narratives of university privatization, this study explores the historical forces that instilled a propensity for market hegemony in universities by the start of the 1970s. This paper identifies institutional habits as the conservative agent that determines change in the university, specifically its habit—and responsibility—of promoting civic duty and the later-developed habit of performing applied scientific research. By tracing redefinitions of civic duty from the Progressive Era through the Cold War, the process of academic privatization is revealed to be dependent on the emerging association of democratic behavior with the promotion of national defense—an effort that became highly market oriented through competition with the Soviet Union. Moreover, defense research grants during the wars fashioned the model for applied research that private industries would adopt following a decrease in federal funding to universities in 1968. Finally, this paper will redefine the 1970s, as a period not of “neoliberal revolution” on campuses, but rather one of convergence—where the social, academic, and business interests consented to the market hegemony that currently prevails on American campuses.