Complicating Upward Mobility: Latinx College-educated Millennials Reflect on Life after Graduation

Abstract

A rich literature assesses whether Latinx individuals, particularly children of immigrants, have achieved mobility relative to their parents. We know little, however, about how these individuals who have achieved a major marker of mobility (i.e. college graduation and beyond) experience their mobility or which cultural ideas influence their self-assessments. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 61 Latinx millennial college graduates, I examine how they view and make sense of their own trajectories and how they engage with cultural frames. Specifically, I identify four different types of (im)mobility self-assessments that respond to the combined cultural frames of Standard North American Adulthood, the Education Gospel, and the Immigrant Bargain coalescing to create a cultural frame I identify as the Latinx mobility bargain. While a majority of respondents report upward mobility, their sense of confidence in that mobility depends on how capable they feel about meeting this amalgamated expectation.