We utilize asset-based frameworks to examine how college-aspiring multilingual, mainly Latina/o and African American, adolescent students from immigrant backgrounds negotiate college-related pressures and constraints and employ college knowledge when mentoring emerging bilingual immigrant peers. Using interviews, post-mentoring reflections, and critical qualitative inquiry, we highlight the mentors’ agency, constraints, and lack of institutional support as they navigated college and financial-aid processes for themselves and their immigrant peers. We discuss policy implications and the need for future research on peers in supporting tailored college guidance and in empowering students from immigrant, low-income backgrounds given their institutional constraints.

Building relationships and utilizing support networks on and off campus as a first-generation college student (FGCS) from an immigrant family is critical to achieving postsecondary success. This chapter explores the personal support networks and help-seeking preferences of immigrant-origin FGCSs as part of a three-year longitudinal mixed-methods study with FGCSs at four public Hispanic-serving institutions in California. We employ social network analysis methods using survey and interview data to explore the types of relationships twelve Latinx immigrant-origin FGCSs have that provide them support in college. To guide our analysis, we use Yosso’s (2005) model of community cultural wealth. Findings reveal the significance and specific types of support provided by parents, siblings, extended family, friends and peers, co-workers, and college advisors. These findings promote an expansive view of familial support, with many connections providing encouragement, motivation, and tangible support and serving as brokers to college-based resources. Recognizing these relationships can facilitate the modification of student services and programming to help FGCSs enroll and persist in college.

This chapter – scaffolded by an interpretive, constructivist qualitative study design supported by liminality and intersectionality theory – shares the voices of nine undergraduate FGCS women of immigrant origin enrolled at a large, 4-year, public institution in the Mid-Atlantic. Our work was guided by the following research question: “How, if at all, do first-generation college student women of immigrant origin perceive the role of gender in their experiences on- and off-campus?” Analysis of multiple interviews with and among participants as well as analysis of participant journal reflections support findings that speak to the students’ perceptions of (1) how familial expectations and country/ies of origin values related to gender roles; (2) how race, immigration status, and language further complicated students’ perceptions of immigrant-origin identities; and (3) how serving in familial roles fostered gratitude, resilience, and transformation.