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INTERSECTIONS OF CULTURAL AND CAREER IDENTITY
AMONG MEXICAN AMERICAN COLLEGE STUDENTS

By

Linda S. Gross

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulﬁllment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Department of Education Administration

2001

ABSTRACT

INTERSECTIONS OF CULTURAL AND CAREER IDENTITY
AMONG MEXICAN AMERICAN COLLEGE STUDENTS

By

Linda S. Gross
This study explores how cultural and career identity intersects during the college
experience of Mexican American business students at Michigan State University.
The college experience facilitates exploration of one’s ethnic and racial identity
as students struggle to ﬁnd their place within larger social, economic and political
contexts. The struggle to integrate one’s career aspirations within a societal
context historically bound by barriers to educational access, economic resources
and political opportunities suggests unique concerns in how ethnic and racial
minorities develop career and vocational identities.

Numerous scholars have studied how the college experience affects
students, but research on identity formation, particularly the identity of students of
color, is sparse (Pascarella & Terenzini, 1991). Further, criticism of traditional
theories of career development have arisen from their the neglect of the unique
historical and social circumstances of racial and ethnic minorities (Leong, 1995;
Osipow & Littlejohn, 1995). Arbona (1995) notes that the career development
research and theory for Hispanics has been given little attention in vocational
literature. US Census data more than suggest the presence of continuing
educational and economic barriers for Latino origin Americans in the US,
speciﬁcally Mexican Americans. Moreover, the projected growth of the Latino

work force and their under-representation in higher educational attainment and

professional roles may indicate a preparation gap in readiness for an increasingly
technical labor force. These facts underscore the signiﬁcance of this study of
Mexican American college students.

As the individual faces critical moments or turning points in his/her
development, such as choice of profession, a crisis of identity occurs which
stimulates the individual’s mediation of self with the larger social world. Identity
evolves then as individuals negotiate their social and cultural backgrounds within
the parameters of their social worlds and lived experiences. This raises some
interesting questions as we study groups who have been traditionally
disenfranchised within our society: What cultural elements are important to
preserve in moving toward one’s professional identity and which are lost? What
conﬂicts in socio-cultural values may arise for a generation of students who cross
professional borders previously closed to their ancestors? Do new cultural
systems develop as these boundaries are crossed?

Findings of the study derived from 17 interviews include a) identiﬁcation of
barriers, inﬂuences, and opportunities in the college experience that affect
Mexican American student persistence in college; b) evidence to suggest the
salience of self-efﬁcacy (Bandura, 1986; 1997) as an inﬂuence in Mexican
American college student achievement in business; c) family support, beliefs,
and inﬂuences regarding career choices; (I) the signiﬁcance of co-ethnic peer
associations in intersections of career and cultural identity; and e) implications

regarding cultural change and social learning.

Copyright by
LINDA S. GROSS

2001

DEDICATION

If we will only Ieam to let live, the plan for growth is all there.
~En'k En'kson

To my grandmother, Lilly Marie Erke, whose dream it was to see her
grandchildren attend college and to my family and friends
whose love and support continue to inspire and sustain me.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Margaret Mead once said “The traveler who has once been from home is
wiser than he who has never left his doorstep.” It is in the people we meet along
the way that we come to know ourselves and our world. I am such a traveler,
although I make no claim to wisdom, I am grateful for the many guides l have
met on the path.

I am most thankful to the students whom I have had the opportunity to
work with in my years at Michigan State University. Although I have served as
an adviser, instructor, coach and supervisor, they have been my best teachers as
it is from them that l have learned so much about myself and higher education. I
am especially thankful to the students who participated in this study, Native
American and Hispanic Business Students, the National Hispanic Business
Association, and the community of Latino/a students at Michigan State
University. I am indebted to Juan Calixto, Lucy Nunez, Magda Sanchez, Mario
Munoz and José Zamora, who have facilitated my growing understanding of
Chicano, Mexican American and Latino/a cultural identities.

l have been blessed with the support of not just one, but two incredibly
supportive families who have sustained me through the hills and valleys of my
research and writing. To my mother, Audrey, and my siblings, Diane and Ron,
thank you for your love and support. To Dawn, Rick, Kelsey, Katie, and Andy
thank you for welcoming me into your lives and helping to keep everything in

perspective.

vi

I am grateful to the many colleagues and faculty members whose support
and guidance have helped me weather the challenges of difﬁcult terrain. I would
especially like to thank my dissertation chair, Anna Ortiz, for her dedication,
advice, and direction in guiding me to completion of this study. I am also
indebted to Rob Rhoads who challenged and inspired me with his work and ﬁrm
counsel at the outset of my dissertation. I would also like to thank the members
of my dissertation committee; Maenette Benham, Marylee Davis, and Francisco
Villarruel. Their knowledge and insight have greatly enriched this study and my
development as a scholar.

l have been fortunate to work with many exceptional colleagues in higher
education who have helped to shape my career and my continuing professional
development. To name them all would be impractical, however, I must
acknowledge the persuasiveness of Elaine Cherney and Stacia Scarborough in
“convincing” me to further my studies and their unwavering encouragement at
every step of my journey. My colleagues at the Career Development Center,
especially Jennifer Leedy, have been incredibly supportive and motivational
throughout my writing process and I thank them. I also owe a great deal of
gratitude to Joe Brocato and Jennifer Bowden whose continuing friendship and
sense of humor made it possible for me to laugh and persevere at times when I
most needed it.

In each step I have taken and continue to take, l carry with me the gifts I
have learned from each of you in hopes that I might be able to share them with

others.

vii

CRU
MBP
MEXA
NAHBS

NHBA

KEY TO ABBREVIATIONS

Culturas de Ias Razas Unidas, deﬁned on p. 39.
Multicultural Business Programs, deﬁned on p. 36.
Movimiento Estudiantil Xicano de Aztlan, deﬁned on p. 40.
Native American and Hispanic Business Students, deﬁned on p. 37.

National Hispanic Business Association, deﬁned on p. 38.

viii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

KEY TO ABBREVIATIONS
CHAPTER 1: Introduction
Statement of the problem
Signiﬁcance of the problem
Demographic support of signiﬁcance
CHAPTER 2: Literature Review
Deﬁnitions and operational terms
An Orientation to Relevant Career and Vocational Theory and Research
Hispanic Labels and Latino Ethnic Consciousness
The Latino College Experience
Notes on Chapter 2
CHAPTER 3: Research Design and Methodology
Research Question and Variables for the Study
Methodology
Data Collection Tools
The Sample and Site
Data Management and Analysis
Reliability and Validity
CHAPTER 4: Intersections of Cultural and Career Identity

Figure 1: Conceptual Model for Intersections of
Career and Cultural Identity

I am who I am. Cultural Identity and Meaning

10
16
20
26
27
28
29
30
31
37
38

42

44

45

Social images of occupations and career path decisions 47

Contexts and identity development 49
Family demographics 50

The Migrant Life 51
Parents’ Expectations 54
Changing relationships with friends from home 59
Changing values and cultural identity 62
Bi-cultural and multi-cultural identity 71
Cultural Connections in College & Social Learning 75
Mastering Transitions 76
Relationships with co-ethnics in business 80
Relationships with co-ethnics outside of business 85
Mastery through experience 90
Internships 90
Career and Cultural Identity in the Workplace 94
Building conﬁdence through experience 97
Barriers, Efﬁcacy and Vision 102
Integrating Career and Cultural Identity 106
CHAPTER 5: Discussion, Implications and Conclusions 109
Summary of Findings 110
Limitations of the Study 116
Theoretical Implications 1 19
Figure 2: Conceptual Model of Engaged Career Learning 122

Pragmatic Implications
Suggestions for Research
Conclusions
REFERENCES
APPENDICES
APPENDIX I: Statement of Informed Consent
APPENDIX II: Consent Form and Demographic Information Sheet
APPENDIX C: Interview Protocol

APPENDIX IV: Variable Relationships in the Interview Protocol

xi

123
124
125

127

132
133
134

138

CHAPTER 1:
INTRODUCTION

Statement of the Problem

 

Part of the human struggle lies in our attempts to understand who we are.
Characteristics such as class, race, gender and nationality help to determine our
place, our station, and, in part, are proscribed by the larger social structure. Yet
there is another part of the human struggle that originates from a vision of
possibility we have for ourselves - a vision of what we hope to become. The
steps we take toward actualizing that vision reﬂect our role in constructing an
emergent identity. One such step is choosing a vocation. This is particularly
relevant to Latino/a students since U.S. social structures have clearly placed
limits on their opportunities.

The purpose of this study is to explore how cultural and career identity
intersects during the college experience of Mexican American business students.
The essence of the topic is best understood by considering two questions. 'Who
are you?" is a question that seeks to deﬁne identity in the present. 'Who do you
want to be?" is a question that points toward future identity. Together, these two
questions suggest a process that helps one move from a present identity to
aspired ones. A central concern of this study is to explore cultural and career

identity processes among Mexican American college students in business.

Signiﬁcance of the Problem

 

Erikson identiﬁed the “inability to settle on an occupational identity” (1959,
p. 132) as a primary crisis for young people. Indeed, one’s coming of age in
contemporary American society is based primarily on clarifying one’s occupation.

“What do you do?” or “Where do you work?” are central questions in nearly any

initial dialogue between individuals. In the college setting, a signiﬁcant amount of
student identity is drawn from one’s major. It is hard to imagine a discourse
between college students that does not include the question, “So, what’s your
major?”

The college experience may also facilitate exploration of one’s ethnic and
racial identity as students struggle to ﬁnd their place within larger social,
economic and political contexts. The struggle to integrate one’s career
aspirations within a societal context historically bound by barriers to educational
access, economic resources and political opportunities suggests that there may
be unique concerns in how ethnic and racial minorities develop career and
vocational identities.

Numerous scholars have studied how the college experience affects
students, but research on identity formation, particularly the identity of students
of color, is sparse (Pascarella & Terenzini, 1991). Further, one of the central
problems with the ﬁt of traditional theories of career development has been the
neglect of the unique historical and social circumstances of racial and ethnic
minorities (Leong, 1995). Osipow and Littlejohn (1995) predicate their discussion
toward a multicultural theory of career development on the following:

The role and importance of the history, education, and social,

political and economic experience of each of the respective ethnic

groups is seen to be clearly related to their career experiences.

The inclusion of these contextual perspectives must play a central

role in any serious attempt toward the creation of a multicultural

theory of career development. (Osipow & Littlejohn, 1995, p. 251)

It follows, then, that any signiﬁcant inquiry into the career development process
of racial and ethnic minorities must consider how the differences inherent in
social, historical, economic, and political contexts impact these groups. A
contextual approach is especially important for research on Latino populations

due to the inherent heterogeneity of its subgroups (i.e. Mexican Americans,

Puerto Ricans, Cubans, and Dominicans among others). While a case can be

made for panethnic studies of Latino cultures, it is important to ﬁrst explore the
unique characteristics of each Latino population in its own right. Arbona ( 1995)
notes that the career development research and theory for Hispanics has been
given little attention in vocational literature. These facts underscore the
signiﬁcance of this study of Mexican American college students. .
Erikson (1968) suggests an essential link between identity and cultural
heritage. As the individual faces critical moments or turning points in his/her
development, such as choice of profession, a crisis of identity occurs which
stimulates the individual’s mediation of self with the larger social world. Identity
evolves then as individuals negotiate their social and cultural backgrounds within
the parameters of their social worlds and lived experiences. Erikson (1968)
refers to this as a process of social evolution, suggesting youth conserve cultural
and social elements that are signiﬁcant to them and discard those which are no
longer signiﬁcant. This raises some interesting questions as we study groups
who have been traditionally disenfranchised within our society: What cultural
elements are important to preserve in moving toward one’s professional identity
and which are lost? What conﬂicts in socio-cultural values may arise for a
generation of students who cross professional borders previously closed to their
ancestors? Do new cultural systems develop as these boundaries are crossed?
The signiﬁcance of exploring student professional identity is underscored
by research on student career choice and development in college. In their
summary of research on how college affects career development, Pascarella and
Terenzini (1991) outline three essential concepts. First, is Astin’s suggestion that
many college students implement a career rather than choose one backed by
evidence that initial career choice is the best predictor of career choice and
occupational entry at the end of college (Astin, 1977). Second, is the fact that

many students change their career choices and majors during college. While

Pascarella and Terenzini indicate that changes in career choice may be due to
increased career exposure during students’ college education, they also suggest
that this change may be linked to a concept of career maturity. Career maturity
refers to the level at which students accomplish developmental career tasks,
formulate career plans, and understand the parameters of their chosen career
(Super, 1957). Pascarella and Terenzini note that the degree to which students
are certain about their career choice and the steps necessary to actualize it are
also vital elements of career maturity. Third, is the suggestion that uncertainty in
career choice is associated with students’ withdrawal from college (Pascarella &
Terenzini, 1991). Taken together, these concepts underscore the need to
explore the processes that lead to students’ formation of a professional career
identity. The implications of the proposed study may lead to a better
understanding of the uncertainties and barriers faced by Mexican American
students in moving into college majors and professions, such as business, in
which they are signiﬁcantly under-represented. How does culture affect
negotiation of the barriers and uncertainties faced by Mexican American college
students? How might career identity affect the student’s cultural identity and
values? Such knowledge may be helpful to increasing Mexican American student
persistence in college, as well as their success in ﬁelds such as business.
Another implication of the study is that it provides a salient look at cultural
change as we explore the intersection of two facets of identity.

An essential caveat to these implications is that terms such as success
are generally best understood in individual terms. What may be a success for
one individual may not be acceptable for another. I take success to be the
student’s ability to have met his/her individual goals, especially as it relates to
education and career. Persistence in college (i.e. the sustained effort toward

earning a college degree) to graduation, may not be necessary for success in

some business ﬁelds, however it is generally a measure of success relative to

college students’ educational goals.

Demographic Support of Signiﬁcance

According to census ﬁgures, the US. population of Latinos has grown
rapidly in the past two decades. Population projections suggest that the rapid
growth of Latinos will continue into the 21st century reaching perhaps 22 percent
of the total US. population by 2050 (Cordova & del Pinal, 1995). According to
Bureau of Labor Statistics, Hispanics are projected to account for approximately
11.1 percent of the US. labor force in the year 2005, which represents the
largest percentage increase of any other work force population for the same
period (Fullerton, 1991). However, despite some improvement in educational
attainment from 1980-1990, Bureau of Census ﬁgures indicate that Hispanic
educational attainment levels “remain signiﬁcantly below that of their non-
Hispanic counterparts” (Montgomery, 1994, p. 3). According to 2000 Census
ﬁgures, the gap in educational attainment continues to be pronounced. Only
10.6 percent of the Hispanic population holds a bachelors degree or more as
compared to 28.1 percent of the non-Hispanic population (Therrien & Ramirez,
2000a). Among the Hispanic subgroups, there is considerable difference in
educational attainment of bachelor degrees or higher: Mexican origin, 6.9
percent; Puerto Rican origin, 13 percent; Cuban origin, 23 percent; Central and
South American origin 10.6 percent (Therien & Ramirez, 2000b). Further the
occupational distribution of Hispanics in the labor force is skewed toward “low
paying, less stable, and more hazardous occupations” (Cordova & del Pinal,
1995, p. 17). Only 11 percent of Hispanic males and 18 percent of Hispanic
females are employed in managerial or professional specialty occupations as
compared to 31 percent of White males and 35 percent of White females for the

same occupational group (United States Bureau of Census, 2001). Therrien

and Ramirez (2000) report that Mexican Americans (11.9%) were the least likely
among Latino groups to work in managerial or professional occupations. These
data more than suggest the presence of continuing educational and economic
barriers for Latino origin Americans in the US, speciﬁcally Mexican Americans.
Moreover, the projected growth of the Latino work force and their under-
representation in higher educational attainment may indicate a preparation gap
in readiness for an increasingly technical labor force.

This study explores cultural and career identity development among
Mexican American college students. It reveals how perceptions of barriers and
opportunities in the college experience affect Mexican American student
persistence in college and success in professional ﬁelds such as business. If we
can identify barriers to student success, we can effectively develop strategies to
help students negotiate and move beyond them. Similarly, this study helps to
identify opportunities to support Mexican American student success by gaining a
better understanding of the intersection of cultural and career identity factors in

the process of college student development.

CHAPTER 2:
LITERATURE REVIEW

In order to situate the study of the intersection of cultural heritage and
career identity of Latino business students during their college years within the
bounds of current research and theory, it is necessary to 1) delineate a set of
deﬁnitions and operational terms which will serve to ground discussion of the
inquiry; 2) assemble the relevant segments of career development and
vocational identity research and theory as applicable to the current inquiry of
college students; and 3) provide an appropriate contextual understanding of the
ethnic groups described by the term “Hispanic” and the role of ethnic

consciousness in Latino communities and the college experience.

Deﬁnitions and Operational Terms

Culture. Culture is a human construct that is inﬂuenced both by
environmental factors and social interaction. As environmental and social factors
change, so do human responses to them. Culture evolves as needs, outcomes,
and circumstances change within our society. Our study of culture then, is really
a study of the meanings we create through our responses to the world, as
Clifford Geertz has so well articulated:

Believing, with Max Weber, that man is an animal suspended in

webs of signiﬁcance he himself has spun, I take culture to be those

webs, and the analysis of it to be therefore not an experimental

science in search of law, but an interpretive one in search of

meaning." (1973, p. 5)
Culture is derived from the signiﬁcance we invest in historical, social, political
and economic experiences that we create and interpret through interactions with
others. As human experiences and interactions vary, so will the meanings

invested in those experiences. It is precisely these variances, or differences in

culture, which engage our study of identity.

Ethnicity. Ethnicity can be described as afﬁnity to a group and its cultural
patterns usually drawn from sharing a common and distinctive racial, national,
religious, linguistic, or cultural heritage. It is a state of consciousness or facet of
identity often deﬁned as unique in contrast to other cultural groups. Ethnicity
serves to identify a group of people from a larger whole based on characteristic
differences. Ethnicity can also serve as the foundation for social and political
organizing functions to advance the interests of a particular group. In this
conception, uniting to access political, educational and economic opportunities
work to shape a group’s sense of identity within larger social contexts.
Fundamentally, culture is a product of ethnicity, which is continually recast as
groups interpret their experiences in relation to others. Thus, ethnicity is
malleable as a social construct.

Identity, self-concept and self-efﬁcacy. It is important to consider these
terms together as they represent three important perspectives related to the self.
I draw upon the work of Erikson (1968), Bandura (1986, 1997), Gottfredson
(1991), Super (1984) and Vondracek (1997) in deﬁning these terms. Erikson is
the foundation for our concept of identity and identity processes. In his view,
identity formation includes both psychological and social factors that undergo
“simultaneous reﬂection and observation, a process taking place on all levels of
mental functioning” (Erikson, 1968, p. 22). Erikson presents us with a
psychosocial concept of identity, a sense of self that emerges through the
interaction between the individual and his/her social world. It is this working
deﬁnition of identity that provides a foundation for our discussion of cultural and
career identity.

Self-concept is an element of identity. Gottfredson (1981) deﬁnes self-
concept as “one’s view of oneself, one’s view of who one is and who one is not.

When projecting oneself into the future, self-concept also includes whom one

expects or would like to be. People may or may not be consciously aware of the
totality of different ways of seeing oneself, but they act on their beliefs about
themselves” (p. 547).

Super ( 1984) suggests that the terminology of self-concept needs to be
speciﬁed as a personal construct in order to understand the relationship of the
self from both the psychological and sociological perspectives. Self-concept can
best be seen as how one has internalized his/her identity as a function of
psychological development. Identity can be seen as a larger deﬁnition of the self,
inﬂuenced by external sociological factors such as race, class and gender, as
well as the internal psychological construct of self-concept.

By conceiving of identity as a construct, Vondracek (1992) suggests the
interpretive nature of identity as a multidimensional process that extends
throughout the life cycle. As individuals encounter new life roles such as college
student, spouse, parent, citizen, and so on, they integrate these new facets of
life into their identity. Similarly, one incorporates career roles into one’s identity.
The process Vondracek suggests is dynamic, changing over the life cycle and
constantly interacting as individuals reﬂect on their individual self-concepts with
their perceptions of how society deﬁnes life roles.

In short, identity develops through the continuous interplay of the
individual’s internal psychological self-concept and the external factors which
inﬂuence the individual's sense of self in social contexts over one’s lifetime. The
interaction between the psychological and sociological is a foundation for
deﬁning identity as a structure.

Bandura’s concept of self-efﬁcacy also focuses on beliefs about the self
and adds an important perspective to the individual’s mediation of psychological
and social inﬂuences. He deﬁnes self-efﬁcacy as “the belief in one’s capabilities

to organize and execute courses of action required to manage prospective

situations”(p. 37). Self-concept and self-efﬁcacy refer to two different kinds of
self-beliefs essential to our understanding of identity. Put simply, self-concept
involves the individual’s sense of self-worth; self-efﬁcacy involves individual’s
conﬁdence in his/her ability to negotiate the challenges inherent in the larger

social world.

With this working deﬁnition of identity in mind, as well as the two
associated elements of self-concept and self-efﬁcacy, I turn now to the concept
of career or vocational identity.

Generally, vocational identity is one dimension of an individual’s identity
based on the occupational roles the individual assumes or seeks to assume in
the world of work. It is generally held that the various dimensions of identity
interact dynamically. Bordin (1984) suggests that “a person’s life can be seen as
a string of career decisions reﬂecting the individual groping for an ideal ﬁt
between self and work” (p. 101). As individuals crystallize their career or
vocational plans, they develop an identity around their perceived role in their
intended vocation stemming from the individual’s need to develop an integrated
sense of self (Holland, 1966; Holland, 1985; Super, 1957). Further, “a more
comprehensive understanding of the construct of vocational identity will require
consideration of the reciprocity of inﬂuence between the self and its developing
identity, on the one hand, and the social environment, on the other” (Vondracek,

1992,p.41)

An Orientation to Relevant Career and Vocational Theory and Research

A continuing challenge in the ﬁelds of career development and vocational
guidance has been to ﬁnd a comprehensive theoretical frame through which to
analyze and understand the individual’s vocational process. This challenge has

produced a very diverse body of propositions forming a somewhat fragmented

10

and segmental theoretical base. One of the most pressing problems evident
upon review of major career research is the inadequacy of the various theoretical
models to address differentiation based on gender, race and class. These
inadequacies are largely products of omission in that the genesis of foundational
theories such as Ginzberg, Ginsburg, Axelrad and Herma (1951) Super (1957)
and Holland (1966, 1985) were based on the study of primarily white, afﬂuent,
college bound men. The application of these theories to women and multicultural
populations is questionable. Researchers seem to agree that the career choice
and development theory is under-developed with regard to multicultural
populations and women (Arbona, 1990; Arbona, 1995; Luzzo, 1992; Osipow &
Littlejohn, 1995; Stitt-Gohdes, 1997).

For the current study, I focus on career development research relative to
college student career identity. This follows from Astin’s (1977) assertion that
most college students are in the process of implementing rather than choosing
their career. Although arguable, this assertion is supported by a number of
career development models (Gottfredson, 1981; Super, 1984; Super, 1957),
which suggest college-age students are in the process of solidifying their career
aspirations and taking steps to achieve them. It is the developmental process of
building a career identity that is the central focus of this study and thus draws our
attention to developmental and social theories of career development. For as
Vondracek (1992) suggests, it is one thing to know what a person does and how
they behave, “but what is really worth knowing is why the person does what is
done” (p. 40).

Arbona (1990, 1995) has provided an excellent review of career
development research and theory with regard to Latino populations. She argues
that the career development models of Super (1957, 1985, 1996), Vondracek
(1990) and Vondracek et al. (1986), and the self-efﬁcacy theory fonlvarded by

11

Bandura (1986) and others are salient with regard to their research potential with
Latino populations. Drawing upon Arbona’s work, I will summarize each of these
models and their particular relevance to research with Latino populations and the
proposed study.

Super’s (1957, 1985, 1996) model of career development is an essential
foundation to the developmental theories of vocation. The model deﬁnes a set of
developmental tasks relative to stages of vocational development that are
integrally and dynamically linked to the individual’s self-concept, career maturity
and life roles over their life span. One of the most signiﬁcant contributions of
Super’s model lies in its relationship of self-concept to career development
according to Zunker (1994). Super’s self-concept theory is delineated into two
distinct components, the psychological and the social. The psychological
component refers to a personal process in which individuals make life choices
and adapt to them. The social component focuses on how the individual
perceives his/her options within prevailing socioeconomic environments.
Although the social components of Super’s theory model have been widely
overlooked in preference to the psychological and personal aspects of self-
concept, the social and environmental aspects of the theory are now being given
attention especially with regard to racial and ethnic minority career development
(Arbona, 1995; Arbona & Fouad, 1994; Osipow & Littlejohn, 1995; Stitt-Gohdes,
1997). The advantage of Super’s model in research on racial and ethnic minority
career development lies in its ability to incorporate structural environmental
aspects such as discrimination, lack of opportunity, socioeconomic factors in
individuals’ development of their career self-concepts. This is especially relevant
to the current study as Arbona (1990) has provided convincing evidence that “the

lack of occupational mobility in Hispanics is related to structural factors, such as

12

socioeconomic status and lack of opportunities, and not to cultural factors” (p.
309).

Vondracek, Lerner and Schulenberg (1986) proposed a developmental-
contextual approach to career development. The approach is comprised of
interlocking systems and subsystems corresponding to a developing person
acting in and reacting to changing contexts. Akin to Erikson’s notion of
psychosocial relativity, Vondracek argues that “no one level of analysis should
be considered in isolation as the prime mover of change. Any level of analysis
can only be understood in the context of the biological, cultural, and ontogenetic
changes of which it is part” (Vondracek, 1992, p. 42). The main advantage of the
developmental-contextual approach to career development is in the
interconnectedness of its level of analysis. With the individual positioned at the
epicenter, Vondracek et al.’s model deﬁnes subsystems of inﬂuence (family,
school, peers, work place) extending out from the individual into larger macro
systems of society (cultural values, laws, history). Due to the reciprocal nature of
inﬂuences on individual identity in career development,Vondracek’s model
provides a frame for descriptive, qualitative studies that explore individuals’
conceptions of their career development process and the interrelationships
between signiﬁcant inﬂuences in their lives. Further, Vondracek (1992) notes that
career development literature is sparse with regard to exploratory, descriptive
studies and concurs with Bordin (1984) in the need for in-depth case studies as
a tool for understanding the complexity of interactions in individual vocational
development.

Arising out of Bandura’s (1986) social learning theory, the concept of self-
efﬁcacy refers to individuals’ beliefs about their ability to achieve goals and
persist in light of barriers they may encounter in achieving them. Arbona (1995)

suggests self-efﬁcacy could be a useful tool in understanding the career

13

development of Latinos in light of evidence that Latinos are likely to face barriers
in achieving education and career goals. Further, the concept of self-efﬁcacy can
also be extended to groups in a collective form (Bandura, 1986). This suggests it
may be a valuable tool for assessing the impact of peer associations between
students of the same ethnic group as they negotiate barriers and work toward
achieving educational and career aspirations in college. However, evidence
suggests that there is a strong relationship between self-efﬁcacy, socioeconomic
status, and ethnicity (Arbona, 1995; Luzzo, 1992), so the interaction between
these variables must be taken into account.

Viﬁth regard to career development research on racial and ethnic
minorities, a few studies provide insight for guiding current research. An early
study by Kuvlesky, Wright and Juarez (1971) comparing status projections
among Mexican American, African American and Anglo youth found that
Mexican American youth were more likely to hold low-level career goals and
anticipated more obstacles in their paths than Anglo and African American youth.
Data from the 1990 census cited in Chapter 1 supports this ﬁnding as Latinos
are concentrated in low status, low paying jobs. Forty-seven percent of Hispanic
males and 42 percent of Hispanic females work in service occupations or as
laborers (Cordova & del Pinal, 1995). Earnings for full-time, year-round Hispanic
workers remain signiﬁcantly below that of non-Hispanic Whites (Montgomery,
1994). Researchers have suggested a myriad of possible reasons for the lack of
career status attainment of minority ethnic groups, from barriers associated with
educational access and retention to historical disenfranchisement and lack of
role models in high status careers.

The study of barriers may be very promising to understanding how
perceptions affect college student vocational development (Leong, 1985).

Several studies have examined this relationship in the career development of

14

women and racial and ethnic populations. Arbona and Novy (1991) found that
there were more gender than ethnic differences in college freshmen’s career
aspirations and expectations. Holland and Eisenhart’s (1990) study of college
women reveals the inﬂuence of gender and peer cultures in women’s college
major and career choices. Strikingly, they found that while schools tend to
perpetuate class, race and gender structures, “agemates are the more virulent
purveyors of gender privilege than school authorities. (Holland & Eisenhart,
1990, p. 8)” Luzzo (1993) found that while there were few ethnic differences in
perceived barriers in career development related to family, signiﬁcant ethnic
differences were found in perceptions of study skills, ﬁnances, and ethnic
identity. In these areas, minority students were more likely to perceive barriers
than white students. Evans and Herr (1994) conducted a study to assess the
inﬂuence of racial identity and perception of discrimination on career aspirations
of African American college students. While their results did not demonstrate that
discrimination and racial identity signiﬁcantly inﬂuenced African American
student career aspirations, further research into the relationship of self-concept
on career development of African Americans is suggested. McWhirter (1997)
found that women anticipated more barriers to their career development than did
men, and that Mexican American participants perceived more career barriers
than did Anglo participants. “Mexican American youth may make assumptions
that they cannot succeed or do not belong in academic and occupational
environments in which they see few Hispanics (McWhirter, 1997, p. 547).”
Evidence in these studies and others support further research into the role of
perceived barriers in the career development process for women and racial
ethnic minorities.

Research pertaining directly to Latino career development is sparse.

However, the most salient work on Latino career development and suggestions

15

to guide future research is that of Arbona. Drawing on the work of Keefe and
Padilla (1987), Arbona suggests that there may be a positive relationship
between higher levels of acculturation and the career progression of Latino
white-collar workers (Arbona, 1990). There is some evidence to suggest that the
higher the acculturation level of Latino students to the majority culture in the
US, the greater their potential to make good career decisions and access
opportunities as their vocational goals are clearer and more stable (Morales,
1996). This may be because students who are more highly acculturated into the
majority culture in the US. may perceive fewer barriers to their career
aspirations. Interestingly, Morales’ study also found that family and background
variables were not signiﬁcant inﬂuences on career identity in light of the
predominant inﬂuence of acculturation. This ﬁnding supports Arbona’s evidence
contradicting those who would argue that the lack of occupational attainment is
due to “socialization to traditional values and Hispanic families’ failure to motivate
children to aspire to high-status career achievement” (Arbona, 1990, p. 305). In
order to control for acculturation and socioeconomic factors, Arbona suggests
classiﬁcation of Hispanic Americans based on generation level and
socioeconomic status (Arbona, 1995). Additionally, Arbona argues for
speciﬁcation of subgroup due to the diversity of the population classiﬁed as
Hispanic (Arbona, 1990). The heterogeneity of Hispanic ethnic classiﬁcation is

discussed in the next section.

Hispanic Labels and Latino Ethnic Consciousness

Hispanics are largely considered a minority group in the United States, but
are decidedly different than other US racial/ethnic minority groups. Giménez
(1992) argues that “Hispanics are not a minority group in the historical sense of
the concept, but an extraordinarily heterogeneous population whose members

differ in terms of race, ethnicity, culture, socioeconomic status, and social class

16

(p. 10).” The term “Hispanic” fails to capture the racial, ethnic and national
diversity represented by those who fall into its classiﬁcation‘ (see note on p. 30).

Ethnic identity is shaped by a number of inﬂuences. Terminology or
labeling such as the term “Hispanic” creates a description of a group of people
whose ethnicity may be simultaneously delineated and deﬁned by the use of the
term. Once a group is identiﬁable in society, it can be targeted for policy (i.e.
immigration status, language, education) as well as social distinction in media.
The description of the “Hispanic” community as expressed through media
images in news, entertainment and advertising becomes a deﬁning force in how
society as a whole views those of Latin American decent. Giménez (1992)
observes that ethnic labels have a “double connotation.”

On one hand minority leaders and educators present them as the

symbols of cultures and identities of which people should be proud.

On the other hand in the context of social science research and

mass media discussion of social problems or of census information

they identify populations that are disproportionately poor and

plagued by all sorts of social problems and deviant/criminal

behavior. In the case of Hispanic, the label ‘upgrades’ Chicano,

Mexican-American, Puerto Rican, and, broadly speaking, Latin

American cultures by making them clones of the culture of Spain; it

gives them a European veneer that denies both their Native

American dimensions and their originality. At the same time,

because it is used to identify a stigmatized population it

downgrades all these groups, stigmatizing their cultures as the

source of the problems faced by a signiﬁcant proportion of their

members while denying the economic and political causes of those

problems. (p. 13)
This suggests a paradoxical nature of minority ethnic identity in the US. The
cultural heritage, which may be a sense of pride and community support, is also
a burden of labels built on societal impressions, however imprecise, which
stigmatize those identiﬁed by it.

Oboler (1992) suggests that the ways in which Latin American peoples
come to terms with their identity is a reﬂection of their direct experiences and
their confrontations with race and class representations in the US. and how their

representations ﬁt within the American society. As American society tends to

17

overlook micro-ethnic identities and lumps Spanish-speaking and Latin American
groups into one, the Latino communities have come to realize the macro-ethnic
conception of “Hispanic” affords a pan-ethnic identity of greater numbers in
which to negotiate structural barriers and advance social and economic growth.
The term “Latino” has emerged as a signiﬁcant alternative to the term Hispanic:
“Latino" has been adopted by some members of the Latin American community
as a self-descriptive term that incorporates all Latin American cultures regardless
of language or national origin, thus placing classiﬁcation on geographical
boundaries as opposed to those of language and race. As a self-descriptor,
“Latino” is growing as a symbol of pan ethnic self-determination and identity.

However, identifying as Latino does not supplant micro—ethnic identities
such as Mexican, Chicano, Cubano, Dominican or Puerto Rican. Padilla (1985)
suggests that identifying as Latino is situational and employed for purpose:

The manifestation and salience of Latino ethnic-conscious identity

and solidarity are operative within speciﬁc situational contexts or at

certain times in the urban life of Spanish-speaking groups. In short,

the Latino or Hispanic ethnic boundary and cleavage represents a

speciﬁc case of situational ethnic identity. This means that the

multiethnic unit is fabricated and becomes most appropriate or

salient for social actions during those particular situations or

moments when two or more Spanish speaking ethnic groups are

affected by the structural forces noted above [education and

employment] and mobilize themselves as one to overcome this

impact. (Padilla, 1985, p. 4)

Thus, a macro-ethnic Latino identity can be seen to emerge from the effects of
structural inequality within American society .

Ethnicity may be situationally employed as a facet of public identity and
lever for social advancement. We deﬁne and are deﬁned by our ethnic and
cultural identities, which are continuously modiﬁed as we integrate the inﬂuences
of social structures, such as class, race and gender, and our aspirations for the

future with our self-concepts.

18

While the needs and issues of micro-ethnic Latino communities may vary,
the power behind societal recognition of the macro-ethnic Latino community for
structural advancement is a signiﬁcant force for social reform. Padilla (1985)
notes that “the decision of Spanish speaking groups about when to construct an
inclusive or collective group identity and come to share a consciousness-of-kind
as ‘Latinos’ is based on the groups’ assessment of their goals and their options”
(p. 64). Calderon (1992) argues that Latino ethnicity serves as a basis for
organizing around issues that threatens the pan ethnic Latino community,
particularly issues which transcend individual ethnic groups and revolve around
class, economic and political interests. He notes that the alliances that emerge
under a Latino identity are situationally speciﬁc to the issues involved, however
“where Latinos were distinguished from other groups along lines of power or
class, they responded panethnically” (Calderbn, 1992, p. 41). Thus, ethnic
identiﬁcation as “Latino” can be seen as a situational tool used to negotiate the
challenges of oppression in political and institutional arenas by garnering the
power of a collective for self-determination.

Cultural change often arises from the interplay of opposing forces in
society. Ethnic and class distinctions arise from the changing positions of groups
within society and the perceptions of difference between those groups. Juan
Gomez-Quinones (1994) provides an artful summary of ethnic consciousness:

Ethnicity and its maintenance are elusive but very real social

phenomena. As a general sense of peoplehood, ethnicity develops

over time through a conglomeration of experiences and rhythms

expressing on going synthesis. The historical, the structural, and

the cultural are the woof and web in this process; power, wealth,

and prestige affect the dye and cut. Conscious-ness and choice

assume greater importance when there are more inter-actions

across ethnic boundaries. Consciousness of identity and of

membership in an ethnic community may be integral characteristics

of ethnicity, but they also are private and public strategies and

resources. When more consciously elaborated, they comprise an

ideology, a point of view, a program for living or action vis-a-vis the
world, and a catalyst to shape the world’s future. (p. ix)

19

Ethnic identity and connection to ethnic communities are an expression of
ethnicity, however, in Gomez-Quiﬁones’ view, this can be a vital resource
operating on a number of levels. The solidarity and support college students
draw from connections to communities that are culturally relevant to their
heritage may also serve as part of an ideology for their career, educational and

life goals.

The Latino College Experience

 

Chickering (1969) and others have discussed identity development and
developing one’s autonomy as two essential tasks of the college student.
College heralds a time of exploration when the individual develops a sense of
autonomy from his/her parents. The college student is exposed to new people,
new ideas and diverse perspectives stimulating a process of self-reﬂection
integral to the formation of identity. Identity is a pervasive, multi—dimensional
concept and its formation extends throughout the life cycle, located “in the core
of the individual and yet also in the core of his communal culture" (Erikson, 1968,
p.22).

The process of identity formation is complex and relative to psychosocial
characteristics. While we have every certainty that identity changes over the life
cycle, its simultaneous and reﬂexive nature is elusive. Indeed, Erikson (1968)
notes that the process of identity development is “luckily, and necessarily, for the
most part unconscious except where inner conditions and outer circumstances
combine to aggravate a painful, or elated, ‘identity consciousness” (p. 23).
Identity consciousness is often stimulated in students from racial or ethnic
minority backgrounds upon entering predominately white institutions of higher
education. Students, in Erikson’s formulation of the identity process, judge

themselves in light of how they perceive others to judge them. The end result is

20

that minority students become quite conscious of their own difference from the
predominant white culture and others they may encounter during their college
years. Identity is modiﬁed through the process of how students judge and
integrate their own self-concept and core values (heritage, family, aspirations)
with the concepts others hold of them. This process is the core of Mead’s (1934)
theory of the social self. Mead argues that self is formed through an internal
dialogue between that part of the self acting out behaviors in social contexts,
called the “I,” and the part of the self, called the “me,” which reﬂects on the
actions of the “I.” The symbolic interaction between the “I” and the “me,” is
essential to the individual’s ability to understand how the self may be perceived
or interpreted by others. Rhoads (1997b) notes that “the other is imagined in our
minds as the ‘generalized other’ projecting cultural understandings of a society or
social group with expectations for behavior” (p. 26).

Vincent Tinto (1987) fonNards the theory that the key to the college
student’s success is effective academic and social integration through college as
a rite of passage. Tinto’s work examines the mechanisms that bond or integrate
the student into the life of the institution and then extends them to build a
systemic, theoretical conception of the student and postsecondary educational
institutions. William Tierney (1992) criticizes Tinto as having misinterpreted the
cultural deﬁnition of ritual. Tierney argues rites of passage are used to describe
passage from one level of a culture to the next level of that same culture. Thus,
Tinto’s use of the term ‘rite of passage’ is ﬂawed when used to refer to
movement from one culture to another culture altogether. Second, Tierney
argues “a model of integration that never questions who is to be integrated and
how it is to be done assumes an individualist stance of human nature and rejects
differences based on categories such as class, race and gender” (Tierney, 1992,

p 285). The problem which arises from neglecting such differences implies a

21

polarity between collegiate success and socio—cultural heritage, as he explains
Native American student success in higher education:

Social integrationists have hypothesized that success in college is

contingent upon an individual’s ability to become academically and

socially integrated into the life of the institution, a process that in

part is predicated on the individual's ability to separate from

previous communities. To utilize Tinto’s Durkheimian formulation,

the implicit assumption is that Native Americans will need to

undergo a cultural suicide of sorts to avoid an intellectual suicide.

(Tierney, 1992, p. 287)

Tierney’s notion of cultural suicide is akin to the idea of a “cultural sellout,” a
common critique of individuals from disenfranchised backgrounds who have
achieved academic and professional success. Fordham and Ogbu (1986) argue
that the result of long standing exclusion and discrimination is that minorities
“develop a sense of collective identity or a sense of peoplehood in opposition to
the social identity of white Americans due to the way white Americans treat them
in economic, political, social, and psychological domains including white
exclusion of these groups” (Fordham & Ogbu, 1986, p. 180). Thus, to succeed in
a white dominated educational system is to "sell out" your cultural identity, not as
an American, but as a member of a minority community. Terms such as
“coconut” (brown on the outside, white on the inside), “oreo,” “banana” and
“apple” emphasize the polarization of marginalized cultures so disenfranchised
that success has become deﬁned as a “white” cultural characteristic elusive to
their own.

How then do Latino/a college students deal with an ethnic consciousness
that comes from being labeled on the one hand as different from the dominant
culture, and, on the other hand, risk exclusion from one’s own community for
becoming too like the dominant culture? Padilla (1997) provides excellent insight
into the Latino/a students search for identity in a predominantly white institution

through an ethnographic study of his course on the ‘Sociology of Latino/a Culture

and Identity.” Through their writings and conversations, Padilla’s students share

22

how they negotiate their Latino/a identity with the “Americanness” that has come
through assimilation and acculturation. Raquel, a student of Argentinean
descent, writes of her wakening ethnic consciousness:

As we discuss culture and identity in this society, it is important to

consider to what degree are we (Latino/as) Americanized or

assimilated. I live here. I have lived here all my life and I cannot

deny that l have undergone some degree of assimilation. I cannot

deny the “gringa” in me. So how do I deﬁne assimilation? How do I

begin to sort out those aspects of assimilation that are desirable

and those that are not? Do I want to be fully integrated orjust

marginally integrated? Is it possible for me to be bilingual and

bicultural in the North American system? These are all questions

that l have begun to ask myself for the ﬁrst time. I had never before

questioned myself in this way. (Padilla, 1997, p. 128)
Ethnic consciousness has stimulated the identity formation (or reformation)
process in Raquel as she struggles to integrate her sense of self in relation to
her heritage and American culture. This struggle is also evident in student’s
career aspirations and cross-cultural relationships. The following student,
Gustavo, a Dominican/Mexican pre-law major, illustrates the tension between the
student’s cultural heritage and his aspirations for a career and higher economic
status:

I am going to law school. I care a lot for my Irish girlfriend. Does

this mean I will deny my ethnicity ifl marry her and attain upper-

middle class status? I hope not because I want to teach my

children about their heritage, certainly more than my parents taught

me. I am determined that my children will speak Spanish and

spend a lot of time with my Latino side of the family. I know that in

a higher position in society I could do more for my people, but

every indication says that upward mobility comes at cultural cost.

(Padilla, 1997, p. 169)
Throughout the narratives in Padilla’s work, a consciousness of ethnic heritage
has stimulated a similarly conscious process of identity development as students
sort out who they want to be in relation to their heritage and the goals and
aspirations they have for their lives, their children, and their community. It seems
clear that ethnic consciousness and identity are essential developmental aspects

of the Latino/as college experience.

23

Based on her research of African American, Latino/a, and Asian American
students, Ortiz (1997) suggests a four-step developmental process involving
ethnic identity of college students. The ﬁrst step involves identifying with the
student’s culture; the second step sees a decline in identity during high school
years; the third step yields a renewal of ethnic identity due to contact with “co-
ethnic peers” in the college years, and the fourth step suggests an integration of
other cultures into one’s own ethnic identity. Likewise, Chickering and Reisser
(1993) suggest the importance of student subcultures in facilitating student
development. “When students are encouraged to form friendships and to
participate in communities that become meaningful subcultures, and when
diversity of backgrounds and attitudes as well as signiﬁcant interchanges and
shared interests exist, development along all seven vectors is fostered”
(Chickering & Reisser, 1993, p. 201). Astin (1977, 1993) fonlvards the hypothesis
that the effects of college are mediated through the student’s interaction with
peers and faculty. Astin argues that the level and frequency of student exposure
to a particular peer group will have a proportional effect on the student’s
development (Astin, 1993). Rhoads” (1994) study of gay men in college
underscores how marginalized individuals construct group identities and
communities through peer socialization and the formation of a student subculture
or contraculture. Holland and Eisenhart (1990) argue that “students bring values
and understandings from other realms of their lives and, together with other
students, generate a system of meaning and practice in response to the social
barriers they face” (p. 7). The co-ethnic peer associations described by Ortiz
(1997) in stimulating the development or renewal of ethnic identity furthers the
signiﬁcance of peer inﬂuences in Latino college student identity. Clearly, peer
communities and friendships are an important variable in any study of the

student development process.

24

Ultimately the intersection of cultural and career identity suggests the
complex and dependent nature of the individual and the social environment.
Erikson (1968) argues that “we cannot separate personal growth and communal
change, nor can we separate. . .the identity crisis in individual life and
contemporary crises in historical development because the two help to deﬁne
each other” (p. 23). Thus, in order to analyze vocational identity, we must also
explore the relative relationships between the individual and the environment by
critically examining the social and historical context in which the individual lives.
Such a research concern suggests a ﬂexible methodology capable of
reformulating concepts and theories as data emerges. This, along with the call
for narrative inquiries in vocational identity by Bordin (1984) and Vondracek
(1992) suggest that qualitative methods may provide insight into the
simultaneous interaction of variables in the identity process.

It is clear that existing research has been very limited in exploring career
development in the context of social realities faced by Latino/a populations.
Barriers arising from the lack economic, educational, and political opportunities
impact students’ perceptions of themselves and their aspirations for the future.
The dynamic and interactive nature of the identity process through integration of
social, cultural and career aspects of the self provides the foundation for this
study. By exploring the intersection of cultural and career identity in Latino
business students through their college experiences, we will gain insight into the
complex process of how one integrates social and cultural expectations with the

individual’s aspirations for the future.

25

NOTES

The term “Hispanic” is a politically constructed term for ethnicity, which
originated in the 1970’s efforts of the US. government to determine a
standard classiﬁcation system for race and ethnicity for bureaucratic and
statistical reporting (Forbes, 1992; Hayes-Bautista & Chapa, 1987). These
efforts, spearheaded by the work of Sklar and Cotter (1971, 1972), resulted in
the creation of ﬁve racial-ethnic categories: American Indian or Alaskan
Native, Asian or Paciﬁc Islander, Black, Hispanic, and White. The 1978 US.
federal government deﬁnition for Hispanic reads: “A person of Mexican,
Puerto Rican, Cuban, Central or South American, or other Spanish culture or
origin, regardless of race.” However, according to Federal Circular A-46,
1972, “these classiﬁcations should not be interpreted as being scientiﬁc or
anthropological in nature... they have been developed in response to needs
expressed by both the executive branch and the Congress to provide for the
collection and use of compatible, non-duplicated, exchangeable racial and
ethnic data by federal agencies.” Thus the term “Hispanic” can be seen
primarily as a label used to manage demography and shape policy, which, in
turn, has considerable inﬂuence on social institutions. The self-descriptor

“Latino” can be seen as a term of community empowerment.

26

CHAPTER 3:
RESEARCH DESIGN

This study focuses on the cultural and career identities of Mexican
American business students at Michigan State University. The Eli Broad College
of Business is one of the largest undergraduate business programs in the nation
with an undergraduate enrollment of 5584 students in the fall of 1998. The
population of Latino students comprises approximately 12.6 percent of the
undergraduate minority business student population in the college and only 1.5
percent of the total undergraduate business student population. Chicano
students account for .5 percent of the undergraduate business student
population, although it may be slightly higher as some students of Mexican
American heritage may choose to identify ethnically under the category “Other
Hispanic.” Latino business students at Michigan State are acutely aware that
Latinos are a very small group within the university they attend. Latino students
are also aware that their position as a minority population is usually overlooked
in deference to the much larger African American population on campus, as are
the Asian American and Native American student populations. This study
examines how students' awareness of the Latino condition in higher education,
business, and society informs some of the actions they take in their career
aspirations, their associations with others, and their identity as a Mexican
American or Latino/a. In essence, we explore how students mediate structural
conditions through awareness of their culture and societal position.

The issue of self-efﬁcacy (Bandura, 1986) is a core issue in the
constructing a career identity and engaging in the culture surrounding that
career. For example, as students struggle to establish themselves in their major

ﬁeld of study, they also begin to engage in the culture of their intended

27

profession, adapting norms and behaviors consistent with the vision of the
person they want to be. However, structural barriers associated with ethnicity,
race, gender, and class may mediate the effects of self-efﬁcacy in constructing a
career identity. This suggests that there may be unique concerns in how ethnic
and racial minorities develop career and vocational identity. An exploration of
how college students from historically disenfranchised groups mediate barriers
arising through the intersection of cultural and career identity has important
implications for our ability to foster the student development process in higher
educaﬁon.

I turn now to a discussion of the speciﬁc research question, the rationale
for a qualitative research approach, justiﬁcation of the sample and selection

criteria, and an outline of the data collection process and analysis.

Research Question and Variables for the Study:

How does the intersection of career and cultural identity inﬂuence

the career development of Mexican American business students

through their college years?
Based on the above research question, preliminary identiﬁcation of variables for
the study is central to developing a grounded sense of the intersection of cultural
and career identity. While the variables identiﬁed at the outset of the inquiry
provide a focus for the process of discovery, it is possible that other salient
variables emerge as the research is conducted (Lincoln & Guba, 1985b; Maykut
& Morehouse, 1994). Emergent variables will be discussed in the summary of
data and implications for future study. The primary focus of inquiry, or the
dependent variable, are the meanings and values Mexican American students
attribute to their emerging career identities. In order to understand these

meanings and values through the lens of the students’ cultural identity, I

explored the following: 1) general demographic information such as ethnicity,

28

gender, age, race, year in school in order to describe the individual’s context
within social structures; 2) the individual’s aspirations for their career; 3) the
cultural inﬂuence of the family such as family expectations and values; 4) the
cultural inﬂuence of peer associations and values arising from those
associations; 5) ethnic consciousness as evidenced through involvement in
ethnic issues, organizations, and communities; 6) experiences arising from
college and work which may shape the students perceptions of barriers and their
expectations for the future; and 7) self-efﬁcacy. It is acknowledged that other
relevant variables may emerge throughout the investigation of the research
question. Appendices l and II contain the interview protocol and a chart that
describes the relationship between protocol questions and the variables listed
above.

Methodology

 

Qualitative methods of inquiry are best suited to study the intersection of
cultural identity and career development in the college experience of Mexican
American students as such methods support discovery of individual experiences
and identity. Identity is derived from the meanings and values students develop
about themselves through their lived experiences and perceptions of their social
world. As identity is dynamic and interactive, we expect it to be modiﬁed as
individuals encounter different contexts in their lives. This study focuses on how
students’ values and meanings related to their cultural identity inﬂuence their
career development during college. The setting for the study is the real-life
context of a college campus during the students’ college years. As students
reﬂect on experiences relating to their cultural and career identities, it is the
pattern of individual identity that is of central interest. That is, how does the
student make sense of the various factors that may inﬂuence identity as slhe

pursues educational and career goals in college?

29

Phenomenological approaches reveal patterns, life processes, and
meanings in the career actions of individuals (Brown & Brooks, 1990). According
to Rhoads (1997a) “A phenomenological approach suggests an interrogation of
human behavior and self-reﬂection; it involves situating human activity not simply
as a means to some higher level ends, but as part of a process of creating
meaning.” (p. 508). Thus, as the study focuses on the contemporary, dynamic
phenomena of identity development and relative meanings within real-life
contexts, qualitative methods allow the ﬂexibility to explore multiple interacting
psycho-social factors which inﬂuence emergent identity (Lincoln & Guba, 1985a;
Maykut & Morehouse, 1994; Yin, 1994).

Finally, the study, grounded in developmental theories of career identity,
ﬁlls a signiﬁcant gap in the body of literature on Mexican American college
student development. As noted earlier, Vondracek (1992) points out that there is
a scarcity of exploratory studies describing the individual’s career development
process within speciﬁc environments. Arbona (1990) notes that qualitative
studies on Latinos are practically non-existent.

Data Collection Tools

 

A variety of data collection tools were used to develop a better
understanding of the intersection of cultural identity and career development
among Latino college students. Additionally, I sought to increase the reliability of
the ﬁndings through corroboration among multiple data tools. Data was primarily
collected through structured personal interviews. Supplementary data relevant to
understanding the intersection cultural identity and career development was
obtained from observations of students participating in undergraduate Latino
business student organization meetings and activities. Additionally, my
background as an adviser with Multicultural Business Programs provided salient

historical perspectives relevant in exploring stimuli and expressions of career

30

and cultural identity through college experiences. Some contextual and
incidental information was gained through students’ personal web pages;
campus editorial and news articles; and public documents such as ﬂyers and
mass e-mail announcements produced by students.

The Sample and Site

The sample for this study was comprised of 17 students with 30 or more
earned credit hours who identiﬁed as Chicano or Mexican American majoring in
business at Michigan State University during the fall of 1998. Students were
identiﬁed from a list of 113 Chicano/Other Hispanic students with declared
business majors enrolled for the 1998-1999 academic year at Michigan State
University. Of these 113, approximately 44 students identiﬁed as Chicano or
Mexican American. Efforts were made to comprise a representative sample
based on gender, class level and other demographic and geographic factors,
however most of the students who participated in the study came from students
who knew me and peer referral. While the participant group of 17 students may
seem small, it should be recognized that it accounts for 38.6% of the students
eligible for the study.

The sample was conﬁned to Mexican Americans, for two reasons. First,
the heterogeneity of Latino populations requires attention to the differences in
the history and social experiences of speciﬁc Latino groups in the US While
speciﬁc subgroups may identify with a panethnic Latino identity, Padilla (1985)
points out that such identiﬁcation is situational and does not supplant the
individual’s primary ethnic identity as Mexican American, Puerto Rican or others.
Secondly, Mexican Americans are not only the largest Latino population in the
US, but are also the most under-represented in achieving at least a
baccalaureate degree. According to Census ﬁgures, only 5.9 percent of Mexican

Americans had earned a bachelor’s degree or more (Montgomery, 1994). That is

31

not to suggest that panethnic Latino studies should not be undertaken, merely
that there needs to be a sharper focus given to primary ethnic identity in initial
studies so that panethnic differences or similarities may be more readily
discovered in future enquiries.

The study focuses on students majoring in business for a number of
reasons. First, business is considered a professional-technical ﬁeld similar to
engineering, math and science in which retention of under-represented students
is a national concern. Second, the setting at Michigan State University has an
active Chicano/Mexican American student community, an active Latino business
student community, and a minority academic and career support program in
business. Further, my position as an insider in the Latino business community
with established trust was also an important factor in selecting the site. My
interactions with Latino business students since 1987, facilitated research
perspectives beyond the structured interviews through participant observation.
Participant observation is an important corroboration tool for data collected in
interviews as the research can look for consistency between what the subject
said and how they interact in the social environments pertinent to the study.
Being able to corroborate data through multiple methods enhances the reliability
and validity of the study. The conﬂuence of these elements at a single research
site afforded a unique opportunity to study the inﬂuence of community, peer
associations, and academic support at a predominately White institution where
Latinos are severely under-represented.

There are several organizations which are important to describe to
enhance the reader’s understanding of contextual factors present at the site at
Michigan State University. Further, a discussion of my roles within minority
support programs and with Latino students is essential to be forthcoming with

perspectives and biases I bring to the research process.

32

Multicultural Business Programs (MBP)

Multicultural Business Programs was established in 1986 as an academic
and career support unit in the college of business to foster the recruitment and
retention of minority students as business majors. The plural title of the unit is
meant to reﬂect the variety of programs it offers for student support such as
academic, career and personal advising; tutorial services; summer bridge and
career exploration programs; as well as student leadership development in
business student organizations. The two oldest student organizations associated
with the unit are Multicultural Business Students (100+ members) and the
campus chapter of the National Association of Black Accountants (20-30
members), both of which actually pre-date the existence of MBP itself. My roles
as an MBP staff member between 1990 and 1999 included coordinating tutorial
services, managing summer programs, student staff training, as well as
individual and student organization advising. More salient to this study, I also
served as a catalyst in helping students create a business student organization
for Native American and Latino business students.

Native American and Hispanic Business Students (NAHBS)

Native American and Hispanic Business Students (NAHBS) is a
professional student organization which seeks to build a supportive network
among Latino and Native American students at Michigan State University.
NAHBS evolved from outreach efforts through Multicultural Business Programs
in the Eli Broad College of Business at Michigan State University. In 1991, I,
along with two co-ethnic peer counselors held the ﬁrst informal meeting of Native
American and Latino business students. Approximately 10 students attended,
two Native American students and eight Latino students none of whom knew
each other. Conversations at that ﬁrst meeting covered a variety of topics,

however the one most striking was that students talked candidly about it being

33

easier to “blend” into the predominantly white student population than connect
with other Latinos in the college. Further, the minority student organizations and
Multicultural Business Programs in the college were seen primarily as “black”
organizations and support programs not particularly approachable or
knowledgeable of Latino issues. Students talked about being a minority within a
minority as they felt most minority programs on campus were geared primarily
toward black students. Between 1991 and 1993, various business majors with
Native American and Latino heritage met informally and served primarily as a
support group. However, after attending the National Hispanic Business Student
Leadership Conference in Austin, Texas in 1994, the group became ofﬁcially
chartered as the ﬁrst chapter of the National Hispanic Business Association in
Michigan. The National Hispanic Business Association (NHBA) is a professional
association founded by students at the University of Texas-Austin and currently
has 25 chapters in 10 states. The annual NHBA leadership conference generally
draws over 600 students from colleges through the United States.

Incorporating as a registered student organization and national charter of
NHBA, NAHBS acknowledged under-representation of Hispanics and Native
Americans in business and in the campus community. E-mail is the primary
mode of ofﬁcial communication among group members and is used to announce
meetings, fundraisers, outreach activities, and socials; news from NHBA;
announcements from other Latino student groups, other minority business
organizations and advisers; scholarship and job opportunities. The executive
board governs the agenda for meetings and guest speakers. Meetings have an
organized but informal tone. Guest speakers have ranged from Latino and
Native American alumni, to the director of the Latino studies program on
campus, to corporate representatives speaking on networking, interviewing and

resume writing. The group regularly engages in fundraisers toward professional

34

conference travel, community service activities, social events and outreach
activities for Native and Latino high school students. However, the main thrust of
the organization centered on their goal to attend the national Hispanic business
student conference held each February.

All 17 participants in the study have attended at least one NAHBS
meeting and all but three would describe themselves as active members of the
organization. Members of the group come from a variety of ethnic backgrounds,
however the two most predominant cultural backgrounds are Mexican American
and Puerto Rican. Others come from Dominican, Brazilian, Guatamalan, and
Colombian heritage. While members of the group interact in a variety of contexts
on campus ranging from classes to career fairs to cultural events to parties, their
involvement in NAHBS has a signiﬁcant impact on their career identity as
business majors and their cultural identity on campus. NAHBS is a salient
inﬂuence on students’ career and cultural identity that appears to be both an
expression of and a catalyst for identity development.

Culturas de Ias Razas Unidas (CRU)

Culturas de las Razas Unidas (CRU) is the largest Hispanic registered
student organization on campus. The organization represents the diverse Latino
community, Mexican—American, Chicano, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Dominican and
other Hispanics/Latinos and is integrated into the organizational structure of
University diversity resources and student government. CRU holds seats on the
Council of Racial and Ethnic Students (CORES) and the Associated Students of
Michigan State University, both voting bodies on academic and university
community issues. The group brings together Latino students, faculty and staff to
exchange ideas, discuss issues, and provide cultural, academic and social

programming for the community. CRU is generally regarded as the central Latino

35

student organization on campus, a hub for the network of other Latino
organizations on campus.
Movimiento Estudiantil Xicano de Aztlan (MEXA)

Movimiento Estudiantil Xicano de Aztlan (MEXA) is an activist political
group of students advancing Chicano issues on campus and in the local
community. The Michigan State chapter of MEXA is also active in the national
arena. Linked to similar organizations throughout the country, the organization
hosted a national conference for other MEXA chapters in 1997. Although it is not
an ofﬁcially registered student organization, MEXA and CRU ofﬁcers have been
known to hold ofﬁces in both organizations. The organization has championed
the establishment of a Chicano Studies program on campus, a Cesar Chavez
Library collection, in addition to being a vocal advocate for social, economic and
health issues affecting migrant farm worker communities. MEXA is has been
regarded as a radical group on campus due to their methods of political activism.
In an effort to have the University join the United Farm Workers grape boycott,
members of the group smashed grapes on the university president’s desk
(Hudson, 1998) and engaged in a water only hunger strike which resulted in
medical treatment. More recently, in ﬁghting for the Chicano Studies program,
MEXA members checked out over 4,500 books from the university library which
limited access to key intellectual resources for all students to make their point.
(Hughes, 2000). In addition to their political successes, MEXA makes the
following unveriﬁed claim the following regarding their members:

We have a 99% graduation rate and boast alumni who have

become Americorps volunteers, United Farm Worker organizers,

graduate school attendees, daily newspaper reporters, organizers,

graduate school attendees, nurses and doctors.
(http://www.jsri.msu.edu/cls/resources.html)

36

Data Management and AnaIJLsis

 

All individual interviews were tape recorded and transcribed by
professional transcription services or the researcher. Those which were
professionally transcribed were then checked by the researcher for accuracy with
the original audiotape and corrected as necessary. After the transcription of the
interview, the transcripts were reviewed thematically and coded to identify issues
and other units of meaning central to the focus of inquiry. Information from the
researcher’s historical observations and ﬁeld notes compared with the
thematically coded transcripts. Issues, emergent themes and patterns were
checked with participants as well as by co-ethnic and non-co-ethnic colleagues
to provide for both a “member check” (Lincoln & Guba, 1985a) and a
professional research check. The member checks were a means of
authenticating the data to assure accurate description of experiences within
cultural contexts. The professional research check veriﬁed accuracy and
consistency of the data between taped interview, transcription and written
interpretation in order to enhance the internal reliability of the study.

Conﬁdentiality. To protect the conﬁdentiality of the informants,
pseudonyms were assigned to each study participant. In addition, names of
places and organizations were changed to protect the conﬁdentiality of the
respondents. Students participating in the interviews were informed of the
study’s goals and signed an informed consent form in accordance with university
human subjects research procedures.

The primary focus of analysis was to develop an understanding of the
meaning students construct around their cultural heritage and how such
constructions inﬂuence career choices and their evolving professional identity.

The following questions guided the analysis of the data:

37

1) What personal and social factors shape students’ conceptions
of a professional business identity? What is the relative
importance of these factors?

2) How do the Latino student’s college experiences facilitate
change in the development of a professional identity?

3) How do students mediate differences between cultural and
professional value systems, if they exist?

4) Do new cultural systems emerge from the intersection of
cultural and professional identity in Latino business students?

These questions served as the basis for the researcher’s decisions regarding the
inclusion and exclusion of data central to the primary research question.

Reliability and Validity

 

Methodologies and beliefs derived from quantitative scientiﬁc research
have traditionally been accepted as a means for establishing authority. One such
belief is the importance of objectivity in establishing validity which yields to an
idealized conception of a researcher who is able to remove all traces of
individual bias from his/her work. Struggles for researcher objectivity in
qualitative research have driven numerous researchers to suppress their own
voice in favor of the illusion of neutrality in third person narrative. Other
qualitative researchers may adapt lengthy discussions of methodology to bolster
their claim to scientiﬁc objectivity and hence, authority. However, qualitative
research is grounded in the fact that the researcher is a positioned subject
inextricable from the context of the study. The researcher’s interpretations are
bound by her personal equation, as Margaret Mead has suggested. Research
interpretations “are the judgments of one individual upon a mass of data, many
of the most signiﬁcant aspects, by their very nature, can be known to only herself
(Mead, 1928, p. 13).” In approaching my research, I have endeavored to actively
question and confront my biases as they are exposed through the research

process. This is especially important, I believe, for researchers who are engaged

38

in cultural studies different from their own cultural heritage. Ultimately, the validity
of the interpretations I present in the study must be drawn from the authenticity
of the ﬁndings which have undergone appropriate triangulation (Denzin, 1989, p.
236)

Reliability of the data depends on the faithfulness and accuracy in
describing the experiences of one’s subjects. Authenticity conveys authority in
that an authentic work is real, true, original, or genuine; in other words, “worthy of
belief.” This notion parallels the discussion of “trustworthiness,” the believability
of the researcher’s ﬁndings in Lincoln and Cuba (1985).

Several techniques were used to check the authenticity of the themes and
patterns which emerge throughout the study. First, data were drawn from a
variety of sources: interviews, observations, correspondence, web pages and
other student produced media. Corroboration of data among multiple sources
adds to the reliability of the ﬁndings. Where there may be divergence between
data sources and informants, efforts were made to verify the credibility of the
data through appropriate triangulation and member checks. As I analyzed the
interviews and supplementary data, a few participants were asked to clarify my
understanding of some of the emergent themes to insure interpretive validity.
Second, the data and analysis from the individual interviews and supplementary
data was checked through co-ethnic and non co-ethnic sources to insure
authenticity in describing cultural experiences and the accuracy and validity of
my interpretations.

As an exploratory study, the ability to generalize here is not a goal. While
the data may inﬂuence and inform the readers’ educational theory and practice,
generalizability is bound by the limitations of time and context. This is especially
salient for the study of identity. Multiple conceptions of reality are expected in the

outcomes of the study based on the particularness of individual participants’

39

identity and experiences. In presenting the data, I use a narrative form to bring
the reader into the world of the students. In doing so, I have sought not only to
identify common themes in the students’ cultural and career identities, but their
uniquenesses as well.

In concluding our discussion of research validity, I suggest that validity in
qualitative research is derived from the authenticity in the researcher’s account
through the researcher’s observational, intellectual and emotional
responsiveness toward her subject. Validity in qualitative research is also drawn
from the researcher’s willingness to reﬂect on herself in her interpretive process
as she constructs meaning from the data. As readers we seek to learn through
the researcher’s insight. Perhaps what we seek is not authority in the qualitative
account, but merely the opportunity to peer through various windows on
ourselves.

Perhaps, ultimately, we arrive at a paradox: to know is not to know or, to
know is to continually question what we know in the search of deeper meaning
and understanding. Perhaps authority in qualitative research comes from our
willingness to question our realities as we have come to know them -- to open
our senses in order to perceive differences in our world and bring them to bear
on our understanding of ourselves. As Charles Taylor said: “A study of the
science of man is inseparable from an examination of the options between which
men must choose” (Taylor, 1971, p. 76). How then can one claim authority in a
process that is continually open to question and choice? From my perspective,
an effective qualitative researcher shares with her readers the process by which
she has come to understand her subject. She discusses her reasons for
choosing her subject of study and provides a justiﬁcation for her work. She is
frank about her methodologies and acknowledges limitations openly. She brings

various levels of inquiry to her work and seeks to understand her subjects from

40

within their own culture as much as she is able. She engages her readers in her
quest for understanding and enlightenment, communicating in a prose that
draws her readers into the senses of the world she has set to explore. And in all
these things, she shares mostly herself, her unique personal equation that allows
her readers a perspective on themselves. Validity comes not from a single
standard, but from acknowledging the many processes we have to understand
ourselves. I turn now to a discussion of the data and the ﬁndings which emerged

from the study.

41

CHAPTER 4:

Intersections of Career and Cultural Identity

With every college major there are certain images or stereotypes that can
inﬂuence one’s perceptions of what it means to be a major in that ﬁeld of study.
The same is true for careers and professions beyond college. Common images
of business majors are that they love money, are goal driven, competitive, and
probably more Republican than Democrat. Personality inﬂuences career choice
as is evident through the research on trait and factor vocational theories. Clearly
social images and experiences may inﬂuence both career and cultural identity,
but what of personal values, goals and aspirations that help us build the vision of
who we would like to be?

Theorists such as Holland have described the process of career selection
and choice as being one of personality. Indeed, personality testing and
temperament indices have a long and distinguished position in the psychology of
career and vocational development work. For our discussion, I take personality
as an expression of identity in social environments. Some interesting questions
arise as we consider the intersection of identity and perceptions of social roles
that approximate the old paradox: What came ﬁrst? The chicken or the egg?
Does identity inﬂuence one’s perception of social roles? Do social roles
inﬂuence the development of one’s identity? Perhaps they inﬂuence each other
dynamically.

A foundation for understanding career and vocational identity is drawn
from the work of Super and Holland. Holland’s (1973) theory of vocational choice
is based on the individual’s personality type as described below:

Each type is the product of a characteristic interaction between a

variety of cultural and personal forces, including peers, parents,

social class, culture, and the physical environment. Out of this
experience, a person ﬁrst learns to ﬁrst prefer some activities as

42

opposed to others. Later, these activities become strong interests.
Such interests lead to a special group of competencies. Finally, a
person’s interests and competencies create a particular personal
disposition that leads him to think, perceive, and act in certain ways

(P- 2)-

Holland’s theory involves comparing the attributes of a person with his set of
personality model types, the combination of which becomes a personality pattern
suggesting a range of vocational choices congruent with others of a similar
pattern. Super’s approach differs from Holland’s in that Super constructs a
developmental theory of careers and vocational identity based on a series of
tasks as individuals explore their career options, make career choices, enter their
chosen occupation, and adjust to the world of work.

As you will recall from the literature discussion in Chapter 2, Super’s
(1957, 1985, 1996) theory involves self-concept at both the psychological and
social levels. The psychological component refers to a personal process in which
individuals make life choices and adapt to them. The social component focuses
on how the individual perceives his/her options within prevailing socioeconomic
environment. Super also incorporates the idea of life stages into his vocational
theory (exploration, establishment, maintenance and decline), suggesting
different developmental needs at different times of the individual’s life. College
students generally ﬁt into what Super deﬁnes as the exploratory stage, a stage in
which adolescents explore their vocational interests through role-playing, school
curricula, peer and other social groups, as well as part-time work experiences.
Super notes that the adolescent exploration process is not often conscious or
systematic, unless structured by an attending organization. “Social exploration is
more spontaneous and parent or peer stimulated, and occupational career
exploration often rides on that" (Super, Savickas & Super, 1996).

Taking the developmental process a bit futher, Bandura’s social learning

theory and concept of self-efﬁcacy are also salient factors in emerging identity

43

patterns. As students master new life roles, such as being a student, a member
of a cultural peer group, and a professional intern, their self-conﬁdence grows
which reinforces both self-concept and career choice. In order to determine the
inﬂuence of ethnic identity in the dynamic process of identity development,
Bandura suggests that “an understanding of how ethnicity contributes to career
choice and development is best advanced by process analyses that link socio-
structural determinants, mediating psychological mechanisms, and occupational
pursuits (1997, p. 438).

In order to make sense of the complex and dynamic interplay of
psychological, sociostructural and aspiration factors inﬂuencing identity, I

suggest the conceptual model in Figure 1.

 

Figure 1: Conceptual Model for Intersections of Career and Cultural Identity

  
   
   
   
   
 
     
     

      
     

Who am I?
Cultural heritage
Gender
Class
Individual characteristics
Personality

Who do I want to be?
Aspirations
Goals
Values
Roles

  

  
  
 

Social Inﬂuence;
Family& friends

  

Education Intersections of
Racial & ethnic stereotypes Career 8: Cultural
Gender stereotypes Identity

Class barriers

 

 

 

The model serves to posit the intersections of career and cultural identity
between these three forces inﬂuence. This model is not meant to be

comprehensive, merely a guide to organize inﬂuences on the intersections of

44

career and cultural identity as students express their thoughts and experiences
as Mexican American business majors in college.
I am who I am. Cultural Identity and Meaning

What does cultural identity mean? Alma said that if you asked her that a
few years ago she wouldn’t have known what to say. Born in Mexico and
immigrating with her family to the US as a child, she didn’t feel she had to “step
into” her cultural identity, it was just there. However, through her life experiences
in the US, Alma learned that:

people are so classiﬁed by their roots or their race or their traditions

or what have you that I feel that it is important for me to know who I

am. And for me to be proud of who I am and I mean that’s me. I’m

Latino. I’m Mexican...l don’t care if people call me Latino or

Mexican or Chicano or what have you. You know, I know who I am.

And I feel very proud of it and, pretty much if I get the chance to, I’ll

tell everybody who wants to know. [laughs]

The positive self-concept Alma expresses in talking about her identity is mirrored
in all of the other students in the study: I am who I am. The surety students’ feel
about themselves provides an important foundation for their steps toward
careers in business.

Success in college and in their careers takes on important cultural and
family dimensions for all of the students in the study. Whether it is being the ﬁrst
in their family to attend college or ﬁrst to have a chance at a professional career,
students talked about the meaning their success as Mexican American business
students would have to their families and their cultural communities. For Eliana,
a ﬁrst-generation student from a migrant farming background, her college and
career success are “very important ‘cuz there aren’t a lot of minorities that
actually graduate from college and get their degree and have those big-time

paying jobs out there. I just wanted to get my degree so I could help all my

family.”

45

The potential to give back to one’s community and to serve as a role
model for others is another prevalent theme in the students’ vision of what is
means to be a successful business student. Christian aspires to be on a Board
of Directors one day, although he said few Latinos have been able to achieve
that goal. “I would love to be a role model," he said, “I’d love to come back and
just talk to people and tell them my experiences that I’ve had in the business
world.” For Christian, being role model as an important strike against negative
stereotypes. As more role models come for Latinos in the future, Christian thinks
it will be easier for Latinos to:

see that things can be done, and possibilities are endless, and

hopefully that people change their minds about stereotypes and

racism in the future. I can see it changing, I mean, but you look at

the last movie “Zorro.” They portray Mexican Americans as people

with dirt on their face, and this is the 20th century, a 1998 movie,

you know? That’s not the way Mexican Americans are. We’re not

dirty people, but this is what people go to that movie and see.

Thousands, millions. I don’t even know how many people have

seen it. It’s just those type of stereotypes that have to change, and

once the people change, it has to come in your mind ﬁrst, and then

try to overcome what other people think, and once those two come

together, it’s looking pretty good, but still there are so many things

to do.

The students in this study are pioneers of sorts, treading where a
disproportionate number of Latinos have gone before. As business majors, there
is a feeling that their success will help pave the road for Latinos to follow in their
path. As a recent Latino business alumnus shared with members of the Native
American and Hispanic Business Students, "if I can work my way up the
corporate ladder I will have the power and money to make a difference in my
community -- to be able to give back and change things for the better." What
then lies on the path Mexican American business students’ travel as they

develop their career identity and work toward success?

46

Social images of occupations and career path decisions

The process of identity involves a negotiation between internal desires
and the external roles one sees played in society. For example, the internal
desire to help others and care for the sick is compared with roles the individual
perceives will help fulﬁll that desire such as doctor or nurse. There are also other
elements at work as one observes others in social and occupational roles. The
observed and perceived outcomes of a given occupation in terms of income,
lifestyle, and social status also inﬂuence one’s cognitive interpretation of a career
path in that occupation. Career aspirations and choices frequently arise from
these negotiations. In exploring career options, students were heavily inﬂuenced
by the social images they held of certain occupations.

Olga was always expected to attend college, as her parents were both
teachers. Education was highly valued in her home, however her career choice
appeared to be more inﬂuenced by her material values. Her parents just said,
“You can go to school wherever you want, but just keep in mind that we’re not
rich.” In middle school, Olga knew she wanted to be in business. She could see
being a successful businesswoman in the future, yet she really didn’t know what
she wanted to do in business. She associated it with being well off.

I knew I wanted to make money. I wanted to make a lot of money,

and my uncle had run a very proﬁtable automotive shop business.

They are very well to do. They have a few garages, and they sell

parts and things... I saw their house, and they just had tons of stuff,

and I just thought, “Wow, I want to do that. I want to have a lot of

money, because it’s great if you could get what you wanted and not

have to ask anybody. You could go on vacation.” And I thought,

“This is so cool.”

Visualizing yourself in a role is a powerful inﬂuence in career decision-
making. Raised in inner city Detroit by his single mother, Andres and his family

struggled to make ends meet. Living in buildings where they could hear rats in

the walls, Andres’ mom worked two jobs just to make sure the family had enough

47

to make rent and eat. The neighborhood was rough. Andres’ mother forbade the
children from going out when she wasn’t at home. Initially, television and his
“ ighting” spirit inspired Andres’ career thoughts: “From when I was little, I wanted
to be a lawyer. I don’t know if it was like L.A. Law on TV, or whatever was going
on, but I love arguing. I love arguing ‘cuz I like winning arguments.” However,
going to college as a pre-law major made him rethink his plans. “Two days into it
I didn’t like it. It wasn’t, wasn’t the kind of law that I thought, I mean, I don’t know.
I think that major goes about law in a different way, it goes all the way around
and then puts you back in it.” He drifted toward the business school and brieﬂy
entertained being an accountant, but didn’t like that either. Andres eventually
decided on Supply Chain Management after talking to some upper classmen at a
career fair. “So that’s just where I ended up and I love it. I love it totally so it
worked out in the end I guess.” Reﬂecting on his decision, Andres’ says he
envisioned himself in the future in “a shirt and tie carrying a briefcase, walking
into a business ofﬁce,” but he admits:

I had no idea what I wanted to do. I knew didn’t want to be like a

teacher or, you know, a biologist, a doctor, or anything. I knew I

didn’t want any of that. So I don’t know. Business was just like the

next choice. I think business is so broad that you can end up doing

so many different things. Once you get in there you can just start

manipulating and maneuvering. So that’s where I went.
For Andres, the choice of a career in business came as a default from other
career options he had ruled out, but it certainly was consistent with the social
and economic vision he had for his future. Perhaps more importantly, below the
surface of social images, Andres sees the ﬁeld of business as ﬂexible enough to
engage his diverse interests through enterprising and self-detennined means.

The integration of social images with individual work values such as ﬂexibility

and self-direction are salient elements in building career identity.

48

Astin’s (1977) assertion that college students are more engaged primarily
in implementing a career rather than choosing one seems especially relevant as
we consider the implications of how students integrate social images of careers
in their development process. For example, Angela is the youngest of three girls.
Her father, a skilled-trade worker, worked 12 hour days and several jobs to put
all three of his daughters through college. After seeing her oldest sister get
accepted to college, Angela began to look at herself and her achievements.
That’s when she started pushing herself academically and began looking at
possibilities for her own future. In middle school, Angela found herself drawn to
business:

What you see on TV is the only time I really saw what I wanted to

be...women in business suits like, you know, carrying briefcases

and working on laptop computers...that really attracted me and

then it was like, okay, so what do they do.

There are two motivational factors evident in Angela’s academic and career
decision-making. Academically, Angela is motivated by her sister’s academic
achievement believing if her sister can be successful, so can she. This efﬁcacy
belief is stimulated by what Bandura calls “vicarious experience," the process of
appraising one's personal capacities in relationship to peer achievements. The
social image she holds of a professional businesswoman inﬂuences her career
identity process as she begins to take steps to become that woman. Both of

these factors are essential as Angela implements her career choice.

Contexts and identity development

 

Identity is more than just the sum of parts that rise to the surface. Identity
development is contextual and reciprocally inﬂuenced by the individual’s
interaction with the world in which they live. As discussed in Chapter 2,
Vondracek (1986; 1992) suggests analysis should stem from the individual at the
center through various subsystems of inﬂuence such as family, school, peers,

and workplace to larger societal systems stemming from cultural values.

49

According to Bandura’s (1986) social cognitive theory, individuals are both
producers and products of social systems. In order to understand the complex
interplay of the student as producer and as product, we must ﬁrst explore the
family and cultural contexts which precede the further development of cultural
and career identity in college.
Family demographics

Most of the student’s parents or grandparents came to Michigan in search
of work, either in the factories or on farms employing seasonal migrant workers.
Only two of the students participating in the study came from families who were
actively working on migrant farm routes. In both cases, the students and at least
some of their family settled out in communities within 30 miles of Michigan State
University. Generally, construction or automotive factory work became the
source of income for men (fathers, uncles, and brothers) from both for ﬁrst-
generation and second-generation families settling out from the migrant life.
Mothers’ occupations were highly variable. Several worked in clerical, health
assistant or childcare roles, while others worked in domestic cleaning, and
temporary farm and factory work. Only one student’s mother worked in a
business ﬁeld as a materials buyer. The educational level of parents varied
considerably, however not without a certain pattern. Second or third generation
parents tended to have a minimum of a high school degree, with only 8 parents
holding a college baccalaureate degree, and only two of these were degrees in
business. Of the college-educated parents, three (two men and one woman)
hold master’s degrees and held positions in education as a licensed counselor, a
school principal and a teacher, respectively. Another college-educated father
working in the automotive industry did advanced coursework in executive
education. First-generation parents had educational levels that varied from no

education to some college, with most achieving a minimum 6‘“ grade education.

50

While eight of seventeen students’ families have some connection to
migrant work, only two students came from active migrant working families. Their
educational and cultural experiences are unique due to their life on the migrant
trail. Both faced barriers in fragmented education, language, and poverty that
were not characteristic of other students in the study. We turn now to look more
closely at their experiences.

The Migrant Life

The experiences of migrant farm working families are relatively unique
within American society. Families move from farm to farm as work dictates
earning minimal wages and living in camps or temporary housing that have
historically been sub-standard. Being transitory in nature, migrant communities
tend to have sporadic access to education, health care and other services. In
addition, the hazards of working ﬁelds with high volumes of pesticides and
herbicides have posed signiﬁcant health related concerns championed by the
United Farrnworkers and advocate Cesar Chavez. Migrant communities have
typically represented a distinct underclass of the American public.

Eliana and Carlos both lived a migrant life, traveling with their families
along seasonal farming routes. Life in the migrant camps revolved around
working the ﬁelds to support the family, with little or no value given to education.
Yet both Eliana and Carlos turned to education as a way of improving not only
their lives, but also those of their families.

Eliana was one of nine children born to parents who worked the ﬁelds as
their parents did before them. Neither parent went to school or learned to read.
Eliana’s family traveled migrant routes from Florida, to the Carolinas, to Michigan
to as far away as Washington State, wherever there was work to be found. All of
her brothers and sisters were expected to work in the ﬁelds to help out the

family. Getting an education was secondary to work, at her father’s insistence:

51

It was really hard. We never got to ﬁnish school. We would jump

back and forth, for one grade we’d have to repeat another grade if

we went somewhere else because it depended on the district, and

we would go to Mexico, go to school there, come back over here.

They wouldn’t accept our grades from Mexico so we had to do the

grade over again. So it was really hard, and my dad would

sometimes just not let us go to school and we would have to help

them work.

Eliana’s mother had different hopes for her children that caused a number of
arguments with her husband. She wanted them to get an education so they
could get better jobs to help the family. Only three of her children ﬁnished high
school, although all of them eventually left the migrant trail. Her sons found jobs
in construction, while her oldest daughters chose to raise their own families. The
three youngest, including Eliana, went on to college. Eliana was the ﬁrst to make
the decision.

When I decided to go to college, I guess it was hard to hear my dad

say, “Why are you going to college?’ He was disappointed that I

was going to college and so I was expecting like everybody to be -

how do you say? -- congratulating me, saying “Oh, I’m so proud of

you and this and that,” but it was really nobody saying that to me. It

was just kinda hard and I had to do it on my own.

Although Eliana’s mother really doesn’t understand the experiences Eliana is
having in college, she asks questions about her classes and is pleased she is
getting an education. Eliana’s brothers laugh and joke with her about making “big
bucks” one day and she sees that as their way of their way of expressing
suppon.

Carlos and his sister were raised by his mother, his father having left the
family when he was only four years old. Carlos traveled with his mother, her two
sisters and seven brothers through Mexico, Florida, Texas, and Michigan until he
was about six or seven years old. She settled in a small town and got a job
through a friend. Times were hard; she struggled to make ends meet with a little

child support and welfare money. In the summers, when the rest of the family

52

would return to Michigan, Carlos and his sister would work the ﬁelds with their
aunts, uncles and cousins.

The one-stoplight town Carlos grew up in was almost exclusively white;
only three other Latino families lived nearby. It was a town in which everyone
knew everyone else. Carlos said he didn’t feel different growing up there as one
of the few Mexican families in town “only because I didn’t let other people’s
perspective get in my way. Either that or I just didn’t pay attention, I think that’s
more or less what it was.”

Carlos readily described himself as stubborn, although self-determined
might be better word. Reﬂecting on family expectations, he sheds insight on his
character and decision to go to college:

Basically, they really didn’t have expectations, to tell the truth, and

being a migrant worker, being a migrant working family, that’s not

your assumption, that you have your kids go to college. My mom

never told me, “You’ve got to go to college.” She never emphasized

that. I did it because I was determined to do it, and it was

something I wanted to do because of the family status and the way

I want my kids to live. So that's my determination to go to college. I

didn’t know how I was going to get there, because I didn’t have the

knowledge or resources to obtain those things, so basically, they

really didn’t emphasize school. It was probably one of the things

they emphasized the least. I think they emphasized family values

and respecting your elders and your brothers and sisters.

Respecting your moms and taking care of them when they get old,

and these are the type of things that you see in the migrant worker

families, and that’s why you don’t see that many migrant worker

students going to college.

When Carlos and his sister started school in Michigan, neither could speak
English at all. They struggled to learn; both ﬂunked kindergarten, because their
language skills were not up to the school’s standards. Despite the early setback,
Carlos enjoyed learning and liked to challenge his mind. He described himself as
a thinker, however his decision to go to college came more as a response to his
skills in the ﬁeld. Although Carlos spent a good number of summers working in
the ﬁelds or helping in construction, his uncles and cousins chided him for being

“a nerd,” because he did well in school.

53

I was never good with my hands, so I couldn’t do any of the

construction work or anything that involved using your hands. I

wasn’t very good at it, so I started thinking about, “What can I do

that I don’t have to use my hands?” And I was always using my

mind, so I ﬁgured education was the way to go. But I didn’t know

exactly how I was going to do it, and I wanted to go to college, but I

didn’t really have a clear out exactly what I wanted to be.
Carlos’ decision process involves both mastery and vicarious experience
described by Bandura (1986). By measuring his ﬁeld skills against those of his
more able family members and building on his own mastery experiences in
education, Carlos’ decision to go to college was consistent with a developmental
state of self-efﬁcacy. For both Carlos and Eliana, college represented a step into
an unknown world with vague ideas about what they wanted to do. Yet, for both,
education represented a way of life with wider opportunities and the ability to
help their families. Carlos and Eliana described themselves as “stubborn”
people, however the stubbornness they describe is more closely akin to self-
determination to meet their educational goals. The highest expectation they have
for themselves comes from within. For other students in the study, parental
expectations played a larger role in their educational and life choices.

Parents’ Expectations

 

Most parents hold hopes and dreams for the lives for their children. Nearly
all of the students in the study draw a great deal of conﬁdence and security from
their parents” supportive nature, with the notable exception of Eliana’s father.
Although parents” may not always understand the challenges college and a
business career choice present to their children, they certainly hold a high value
for education and their child’s happiness.

Carmen is the third of four daughters. Her oldest stepsister graduated
from college, her next older sister takes classes at junior college. Carmen’s
reﬂection on her parents’ expectations is typical of most of the students in the

study:

54

It was never said you are going to go to college, but I think it was

known. It was just known that you were going to go. So I never felt

pressured to excel and just be all like that. But I think that was the

thing. They never pressured us and said “you must do good in

school and you must do this and you must do that.” They just let us

grow as people and, you know, when we needed guidance, they

were there. I think we had a very open relationship.

According to the students, their parents (with one notable exception to be
discussed shortly) hold high values for education, and most importantly, their
children’s happiness. Students generally described an intuitive sense of knowing
they were going to go to college or further their education in some way, although
some parents were more overt in expressing their expectations.

Nina, a junior majoring in human resources had a very stable childhood
and a father who always had high expectations of her. Her father, a computer
engineer who did not graduate from college because he was hired away before
he ﬁnished, was emphatic about his daughter’s educational plans. He always
expected the best grades from her and a strong work ethic. However, Nina’s
determination to go to college transcends just parental expectation, it involves a
high degree of personal conﬁdence and self-efﬁcacy:

My dad would probably have had a heart attack if I’d said I didn’t

want to go. I can’t even imagine not going, because I wanted to go

just for myself, not even thinking about what my dad said. I couldn’t

even imagine not going to college. I don’t know, from the time I was

like in kindergarten, and I was in an advanced reading group, so, it

was always expected of me. I didn’t even think about not going. I

didn’t know what degree I was going to get, but I always knew I’d

get one. It was just second nature, I guess.

In this reﬂective statement, Nina has integrated her goals, perceived skill level,
and social expectations into her cognitive choice to attend college. Bandura
(1986) describes this as “triadic reciprocality,” the combined and reciprocal
inﬂuences of behavior, environmental inﬂuence and personal factors that affect
cognition. Nina’s sense of knowing she would always attend college is the result

of those reciprocal inﬂuences.

55

In choosing a major, Nina, like many of the other students in the study,
went through a period of exploration, trial and error before ﬁnding the right ﬁeld
of study. Although her father was a bit prescriptive in his expectations for her,
Nina laughed when she reﬂected on her major choices:

Well, they’re pretty happy now that I’m in business, but my dad had
a whole plan for me. I’d get my undergraduate degree in Finance at
Michigan State University. Then I’d go to U. of M., my dad loves
U.of M., to get my Masters in Economics, and then I can move to
Washington DC. and join the Cabinet, or something. He just had a
whole plan for me, and ﬁnance isn’t something I wanted to do. I
really started off in Dietetics, then I moved to Physiology, because I
wanted to be, a PA, a Physicians Assistant. Then I took a ﬁnance
class, because I really wasn’t into science, and I switched to
Finance. My dad was really happy about that! But I realized that
Finance wasn’t for me either, then I got into Human Resource
Management, and I love it! He’s proud of me, though. He’s happy
with me getting a Business degree, you know? He knows I’m doing
what I’d like to do now. I actually found my niche, so he’s very
happy. Very proud.

Sara’s experiences are similar to Nina’s in ﬁnding the career choice,
although Sara’s father was a little harder to win over. A senior majoring in
hospitality business, Sara is the oldest of three children. Sara’s grandparents on
both sides came from the borderlands in the Rio Grande Valley before moving to
Michigan in search of factory jobs with their children. Her parents, both of
Mexican heritage, were born and raised in Texas. Sara’s father earned a
bachelor’s degree from a public Michigan college. He retired when she was in
her early teens, having worked for many years in the medical ﬁeld. Sara’s
mother, having only a 5th grade education, made a home for the family. Sara’s
parents were determined that she and her siblings go to college.

There was no question I had to go to college. I didn’t have a

choice. Not that I didn’t want to, because they raised me that way.

My parents used a lot of examples, they would show me one of my

cousins and pull me aside and say, and “You see them They

dropped out when they were 17 from high school and now look at

him. Now he is working hard, look at his hands. They are all rough

and calloused and he is having a hard time. You just don’t get

anywhere unless you graduate from high school and you go to

college.” You know, they put that in your mind when you are four
years old, it starts to burn an impression on your brain. Like there is

56

nothing, there is no other way. Whenever we’d see a burn on the

street, dad would say, “That’s what happens when you don’t go to

college.” So you tell an eight year old or something like that, it

really gives you this harsh impression...But I’m glad that they did it,

because I’m going to graduate soon and I’m the ﬁrst one to

graduate, out of all of my cousins.
In high school and as a college freshman, there was nothing Sara wanted more
than to study drama and go into the theatre. Her parents, however, had other
plans. She explains “there was no way in hell they were going to let me do
theater. Like ‘l’m paying for your college tuition, you are going to go into
computers or engineering or business, something real,’ is what they said.“ Sara
began her search then for “something real” to study in college to respect her
parents wishes, but the search led her to ﬁnd something that she could be happy
with. She started as an economic and political science major and made the
dean’s list for her ﬁrst two semesters, but she felt the major was “not really real.
It is all theory.” Sara said she tried to compromise.

I just hated it. I just didn’t like it there and I didn’t know what I

wanted to do. I kept telling dad, “I want theater, I want to go to

theater.” And I think that’s probably why I hated it so much. I didn’t

know what to do. And dad said, “Well you know, you better do

something and you better do it quick, because I’m not going to

keep paying for tuition for you to do something and then you want

to change your mind halfway through.”
Sara decided it was time for some help. She went to the career services ofﬁce
and took a “personality test.” Although she thought the test was “cheesy” at the
time, Sara was able to identify some majors of interest and set about talking with
various advisers about their academic programs, taking an introductory course or
two in different majors she found interesting. When she did ﬁnd a major that ﬁt,
her father was quite dismayed at her choice.

I found hospitality-business school and I really liked it. I brought the

information to my dad and he was like, “People do not go to school

to learn how to be a hotel manager.” I’m like “Dad, yes you do, you

got to do this.” And he was just set against it. And the ﬁrst year he

thought I was wasting my time. He goes, “I can teach you how to

check in a place and how to start a restaurant.” I’m like “Dadl”, and
he goes “Your Aunt started a restaurant. She’s been doing ﬁne and

57

she didn’t even graduate from high school.” He goes “How hard
can it be that you need a college degree?” Too bad her restaurant
is out of business now. But, now he’s more comfortable about it.
He’s excited about it. I think his biggest thing was that I was doing
something that he didn’t understand the lingo. Like I when I talk to
him, I’m talking to him about different hotel companies and the
mergers that are happening between one company and another.
Or we talk about like what the ROI is, the return investment on
someone’s restaurant, you know, whether or not you should go into
a franchise or do independent things like that. It is all over his head.
It is new for him, so he feels like, I think the tension before was, he
was scared that I was going to learn something that he didn’t know
and then we wouldn’t be able to communicate on the same level.
When I was a kid, he wanted me to study medicine like he did. Or
go into law like he had always dreamed of doing. I think that was a
big thing too. Like he still says, “Well I’m going to go to law school,
some day I’m going to go just to go and get my degree.” And that’s
why I think he always wanted me to do those things to kind of ﬁnish
what he didn’t get to do. But, I guess, I couldn’t do that. I know a lot
of kids end up doing those things, they do what their parents
always wanted to do. But, I knew I was just not going to be happy.

Like Nina, Sara found her niche in ﬁnding a major that she really loved. Although
respectful of her father’s hopes for her, Sara’s enthusiasm for her major led her
to excel in it. There is an animation in her eyes when she talks about her
internship experiences or her work as a student leader in several hospitality
related student organizations. One could argue that there is always a bit of
theater in the hospitality business, so perhaps Sara did ﬁnd the perfect
compromise to her father’s concerns.

Seeing a child take an interest outside one’s realm of experience can be
threatening for some parents, especially those with little to no education. As you
may recall, neither of Eliana’s parents had any formal schooling nor could they
read. They had distinctly different expectations for their nine children who
traveled with them on migrant farm routes. Eliana talks about her parents’
expectations:

My dad, his expectation was just for us to work hard and to help

them out. He never expected us to go to school. He never liked us

going to school ‘cuz he wanted us to help him. My mother, she

would, I guess her expectations for us, she wanted us to have an
education and to try to get better jobs so that we could help the

58

family. So there was always like arguments between my parents
because one expected something different from us than the other.

Eliana admits that her mother really didn’t have much of an idea about what
school was, but she wanted her to go. “She wasn’t really educated of how far
you’re supposed to go to school. So she just wanted us to get some education,
to learn something more that she couldn’t, to get around, ” she said. Eliana drew
some support from her family, although they really do not understand her
experience. Her mother and sisters were “just happy that I’m going to college, I
guess, because I’m the ﬁrst one to attend college.”

Taking ﬁrst steps is a time of excitement and joy for parents, but it is
tempered by the fact that once the child begins to take those steps, the parent
may not be able to control where the student chooses to walk. As children
master taking steps their independence and conﬁdence grow. Such is the case
of students in this study as they ﬁnd the right path for themselves in college and
career. But just as the students move toward their future, they also may be
moving away from communities and relationships that have been a formative
part of their identity.

Changing relationships with friends from home

Although many students who attend college see their relationships
change with friends from back home, the changes experienced by students in
the study take on a signiﬁcant cultural dimension that impacts their sense of
identity. As students enter college they are exposed to a different expressions of
Mexican American and other Latino/a cultures often quite different from their
cultural experiences in their home communities. The adjustment to academic,
social and racial culture of campus also stimulates change in college students as
each struggles to ﬁnd their place within the campus environment and develop a

sense of belonging. In realizing opportunities that the college experience

59

provides, friendships change and new perspectives develop both culturally and
professionally.

Although Andres tried to maintain his relationships with friends from back
home, things changed as he ﬁnished his ﬁrst year in college. As Andres ventured
from home to college, his world became larger and his identity as a street kid
from Detroit changed.

After living up here for a couple of months and going home on the

weekends or whatever, I lost touch with a lot of them. I became a

traitor and I think I’m better than everybody else at home because I

go to college - that’s a lot of the attitude that I get from home and it

wasn’t me. I don’t think it was me portraying this attitude. I’m sure

that after coming up here I got a reality check like the whole world

isn’t a big ghetto, you know? There’s nice things. There’s nice

streets. There’s nice cars. There’s nice people. There are people

who aren’t out to give you dirty looks or rob you or something like

that. That’s not the mentality up here...at school | feel completely

sa e.

Andres’s mother has been an instrumental support in his changing circle of
friends. She welcomes Andres’s friends into her home and thinks nothing of
having a houseful of his college friends crashing at her house for the weekend
and feeding them home-cooked meals. Her support has helped Andres make a
successful transition to college, although she misses her son. He said, “She
loves everything that I do up here. She just really thinks it’s made me a better
person."

Jamie said his friendships with friends from high school haven’t changed
much as he lives so close to home, but he also admits “I see things differently
probably now.” Jamie hangs out with more minorities in college, with most of his
friends coming from M38 or NAHBS. In being able to connect with more
students who share his cultural background, Jamie reﬂects on the changes he
sees in himself and his perspective:

Growing up, I went to private school, pretty much white and [my

home town is] pretty much white. I kinda see through things, I don’t

know through white eyes but the white way of looking at things
sometimes and now that I’m with more minorities, black and

60

Mexican and other people, it changes a little bit the way you see
things. I don’t know if it’s good or bad or not but it’s different.

Like Jamie, Luisa also grew up in a predominantly white environment, but her
relationship with her mostly white friends back home is quite different. She and
Celia, another girl from high school who came to Michigan State, are still close.
However, many of their other friends who didn’t go to college are still living at
home with parents and not doing much of anything to build a career. Luisa has
cut ties with them because “they think that people like me and Celia are sell-outs,
or show-offs or whatever when we talk about what we’re doing at school, so I
don’t really associate with them. I don’t feel like I have anything in common with
them anymore.”

Other students in the study talked about being called a ‘sellout.’ Sara’s
family was always active in the Mexican American social community, active in
church, quinciheras and social celebrations that seemed to happen every
weekend. Yet Sara found herself becoming alienated from other Latinos in high
school when her academics set her apart. Always a high achieving student, she
was puzzled by the reactions of her Latino peers.

For some reason the Latino high school kids did not identify with

me. They would tell me that I was trying to act like I was white. And

so I think it was a lot because I was very smart in school and

because I would get the good grades and they didn’t. I would get

recognition from administrative people within the school, and they

would see. I mean I was even called a ‘sellout,’ which I mean how

can you be 15 years old and be a sellout? Whatever, you know. I

didn’t understand that, so I ignored that.

Things changed for Sara when she came to campus. Her close friends are all
from Latino backgrounds. Yet, Sara was quick to talk about other groups of
friends outside her ethnic circle: “I do, you know, have friends that are outside of
those kinds of circles....l like to jump from one circle to the other and one day I
might feel like hanging around with these people or other people. So I do like

jump around, but I feel most comfortable with my Latin friends.”

61

As students in the study moved away from their friends at home and
gained greater independence from their families by going to college, they found
new environments and developed new perspectives on their cultural identity. In
order to understand some of the issues the students in the study deal with as
cultural and career identities intersect in college, we must ﬁrst explore their
perspectives on their cultural heritage.

Changing Values and Cultural Identity

Mexican American. Hispanic. Chicano. Latino. The variety of labels used
to describe Mexican American students is as diverse as the students’
conceptions of their ethnic identity. Carlos has given a lot of thought to issues
surrounding Mexican-American identity. On campus, he has always been active
in the Latino community by being a mentor to high school students and
participating in leadership conferences. He says that “just the terminology
Mexican-American means that you have Mexican culture, but that you were born
in America, so you’re basically considered to be a Mexican-American.” But, for
Carlos, cultural values change as generations change. “Nowadays, the values
and the cultures of Mexican-Americans are changing due to the fact that you’ve
got second and third generation families adapting to American culture,” he says.
As a ﬁrst generation Mexican American, Carlos acknowledged that he may see
Mexican culture differently than those who are second or third generation.

To me, it’s more of a culture, rather than skin color. I think being a

Mexican is more or less a culture. What I mean by that is that we

really value family values, norms, religions, basically we’re almost

the same anywhere in the world, whether we’re Mexican-American,

or just a Mexican. They’re almost the same values.

Carlos noted there are a lot of different conceptions about being Mexican,
Hispanic or Latino, although they don't mean much to him:
To me they’re just terms to label people... probably a lot of us use
Latino, rather than Hispanic, only because Hispanic came from so-

called government, made up. That’s what the government named
our group, but to me, I guess it really doesn’t identify me. But that’s

62

just more of just a name or just to gather people that almost ﬁt the

same criteria even though they have different cultures...Mexicans

are totally different than Puerto Ricans. Puerto Ricans are totally

different than Cubanos. Butjust more or less, the alignment of

being brown skinned and speaking Spanish kind of integrates them

as a whole, as being Latino, and that’s where you get all this

terminology. Latin American, I guess, that’s how they put us

together, but other than that, the cultures are totally different.
Carlos talks candidly about issues of skin color, noting that in Mexico, people
with lighter skin and eyes are often wealthier and more privileged than those who
have darker skin. But in the US, he says, “We’ve been labeled as being a
brown person, so we kind of end up with that identity anywhere.” College can
transform one’s ideas about skin color in Carlos’ view.

I don’t think it matters. I think it really depends on the person and

where they grew up and their perspective. And I think it also

depends on the amount of time they’ve been here at college

because being a freshman you have a different perspective

because you were raised different. Once you get into college, you

kind of adapt to the college environment, and you tend to not see

skin as a factor. You more or less see the person as a whole... I

don’t see only because you’re lighter, you’re treated differently in

the Latino community or if you're darker, you’re treated differently. I

just don’t see that.

Tom’s experience as a light-skinned Mexican has been slightly different.
He and his brother grew up on the west side of Detroit, and both attended
Catholic schools through high school. Their parents divorced when Tom was still
a toddler, and he had very little time with his Mexican father. However, he and
his brother spent lots of time with grandparents and playing with cousins on both
sides of the family. Tom identiﬁes with both his Mexican and Polish heritage, and
has struggled with others’ perceptions of him: “A lot of times it’s hard because I
look white, so no one really takes me for a Mexican-American, and when | tell
them, it’s kind of awkward.” After attending a predominantly white high school,
Tom’s ﬁrst opportunity to be a part of a cultural community of his peers came in
college. It was hard for him to adjust at ﬁrst to participating in cultural activities on

campus.

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It’s kind of hard for me because at times I don’t, sometimes I don’t

feel accepted because I do look white. A lot of people, they’re like, I

get the feeling, “Why are you here?” I mean, “You’re not Mexican.”

But I am. And you know, a lot of people don’t’ know that. And I’m

not saying that a lot of people were like that toward me, but it’s the

feeling that I got.

Tom acknowledges it’s still hard for him to adjust sometimes in the Latino
community because he feels the unspoken question “Why is he here?” Yet he
perseveres because he knows “once you get in there it’s better. You know, you
make more friends and people know who you are and stuff.”

Rocio identiﬁes as both Chicano and Mexican-American because “I can
identify as both. In my own mind I can justify existing within both of those
subcultures. You know what I’m saying? It’s cool.” He reﬂects on his Mexican
American heritage:

Mexican-Americans, like my grandparents that live in Texas, they

don’t even speak English, and they’re all about Mexico and stuff

‘cuz all their family was there when it used to be Mexico and stuff

or just like a little bit north. They migrated from there and then that

makes them Mexican as hell, right? And then like the other side,

they used to have ‘em, that were just in Texas and like before that

they were just scattered with no kind of history or real place or

anything. And then my parents, they’re all born in America. So that

would make me Mexican-American, right?

Rocio describes his Chicano identity differently. To him, “Chicano is like a more
political term that I would like to identify with just like, be known in like political
arena ‘cuz that’s another thing that I would like to be interested in later in life.”
Rocio was exposed to the Chicano movement through his parents at a young
age and remembers being involved in his parents’ activities with a Chicano
organization. His parents made sure Rocio was engaged in his Chicano heritage,
mixed folklore dancing with politics, although he admits,

“I don’t know too much about the whole entire movement except for

what I’ve seen on like PBS’ specials and stuff. My father made me

watch the stuff. The stuff was like Corky Gonzales and all those
other movimientos, or whatever the hell they’re called.”

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In college, Rocio has been active in Chicano and Latino activities. He’s observed
that a number of other students aren’t aware of what Chicano means. “A lot of
them haven’t even experienced it [being Chicano], “ Rocio explains, "They deal
with it in an ignorant fashion....people are ignorant for not knowin’ about what
kind of background we have.”

Like Rocio, Carlos would argue that some people identify as Mexican
American or Chicano without any real understanding of the culture, history or
language. He suggests that it may be because ”the parents are second or third
generation, they didn’t teach them the values, or they lost the values of where
they actually came from.” Carlos says that is why many Latinos have lost their
Spanish language as well. He suggested that some people turn to adopting a
label to help them feel more culturally connected:

For instance, people are labeling themselves as mestistas when in

reality they don’t even understand the culture of being a Chicano or

being a Mexican, especially people who are raised in the Midwest. I

see that a lot, so you take people from the southwest that come up

here to go to college, they kind of get mad because they’re labeling

themselves whatever they are, and in reality, they don’t understand

the culture for themselves. They just label themselves that way.

Especially from the Midwest, because there’s a very low

concentration of Latinos-especially in Michigan.

Other than Rocio, none of the other students in the study cared to identify as
Chicano. Most felt that a label was just a label. Language was more an issue of
being connected to one’s cultural heritage.

All of the students in the study regarded Spanish as a very important part
of their cultural heritage, although all but three students were raised with English
as their native language. Not being taught Spanish in the home had some
important implications for students’ feelings about themselves, their families and
their cultural identity.

Although her parents are native Spanish speakers, Angela and her sisters

were raised with English primarily spoken in their home. Her parents spoke in

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Spanish when they visited their parents and when they did not want Angela and
her sisters knowing what they were getting for Christmas or other “little things
that they didn’t want us to know about.” Angela’s recalled her mother’s
experience in going to school when she was a child.

When she was going into school and all she knew was Spanish,

she said when she went in she got teased a lot because she would

say things like in Spanish and all the kids would tease her because

she didn’t know English. So for her growing up, it was always

pressed on her, “you need to learn English. You need to learn the

new English.” So growing up, she says that’s what she pushed on

us was English....Spanish just became the second language.
This experience is characteristic of many other students’ Spanish speaking
parents in the study. The social pressure to learn English seems to have deeply
inﬂuenced their decisions as parents to make sure their children knew English
before Spanish. Angela can usually understand what she is hearing in Spanish
now and said that sometimes she’ll try to answer back in Spanish, “but it just
takes me a little bit longer to remember what to say or what is the proper way of
saying it.” When asked about how important she thinks it is for a person to be
bilingual in the Mexican-American community, Angela said:

I think it is important. Although the main reason why I think it is

important is because my parents speak it and their siblings speak

it, which is all the older generation. If we don’t know the language

and we don’t know the culture and things that go on being a

Mexican-American, then it is just going to fade out. And we are just

going to be not really knowing what we are or who we are or where

we came from. I think that is very important. My parents see that

now too, but at the time it was just like they wanted me ﬁt in -- they

wanted me to know English. They didn’t want me to speak with a

Spanish accent or something like that. So that’s why they pushed

the English, I think.
Angela feels strongly about Spanish being part of her heritage and intends to
make sure her children know the language.

For ﬁve students in the study, not being able to communicate fully with
Spanish speaking family members left them feeling somewhat disconnected from

their family. In junior high, Richard decided he was going to learn Spanish: “I

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wanted to take it just because my grandparents, that was their major speaking
language, and I didn’t know what they were saying.” The youngest of four
children, Richard is the ﬁrst of his family to attend a major university. His father
dropped out of high school to join the military and then worked in automotive
factories. Richard’s mother has been working as a domestic since before she
graduated from high school. Both parents speak Spanish primarily in the home,
but they taught their children only English. Richard explained, “My Ma, she didn’t
want to teach me Spanish, just because she said it was going to be difﬁcult for
me to know Spanish and then come back and learn English.” After picking up
“the basics” in his junior high Spanish classes, Richard made an effort to pick up
more Spanish from his parents. Although Spanish is important to him, he feels
uncomfortable and embarrassed about how he speaks. He said, “I can’t speak it.
I don’t feel comfortable speaking like what I know just because, when I speak, it
sounds like it is broken. Like broken Spanish, like I don’t know what exactly what
I’m saying.”

Olga’s parents, both educators, had some deﬁnitive ideas about their
children’s language and cultural associations. She said her parents “thought that,
you know, A) they didn’t want you to grow up with an accent, and B) it was just a
social stigma, when we were growing up -- its not cool -- to eat Mexican food, or
speak Spanish in front of the white people, so it hurt.” Of her parent’s children,
she was “the only one who made a concerted effort to learn Spanish.”

I studied in Mexico for a few months, and took Spanish in college.

It’s funny, at different times [depending on] my level of comfort, I

still have an American accent. I really hate it. I realized in Mexico
when I felt real uncomfortable around native speakers because my

Spanish was no better than the white person next to me. But when

I felt really comfortable, I could get by, and people would say, “Hey,

what part of Mexico are you from?”

Olga’s father, like many other students’ parents in the study, wanted a better life

for his daughter. Although he initially did not teach Olga Spanish, he supported

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her wanting to learn it as part of her cultural heritage. However, “my dad didn’t
want me spending any time with Mexican Americans,” Olga says, “He wanted us
to be completely taken into the mainstream culture.” An educated man coming
from a migrant family, Olga’s father’s experiences in the Mexican American
community in Texas were much different than those he found in Michigan. Olga
explains:

Their experience was different. Growing up in Texas, it’s not like

growing up here. Like, there’s a bunch of Mexicans, and then there

are tons more white people. [In Texas] it’s not like that. It’s just an

accepted part of the culture. Even the white people eat Mexican

food, and take part in some of the traditions, but within that culture,

you still have your educated workforce, you know - your doctors,

your lawyers, and then all different segments that you would ﬁnd in

any other culture. But here, a lot of the Mexican-Americans tend to

be the migrant workers from the wrong side of town, who have

different lifestyles, whose fathers weren't in the home, or whatever.

And that’s not where my father, even though that’s how his life had

originated, that’s deﬁnitely not how it ended up for him or for his

brothers and sisters, so they wanted some things better for us, and

I understand.

Although she understands her father’s perspective, Olga is deeply engaged in
learning about her Mexican heritage, not only through language but also by
being deeply involved in the Mexican-American issues in college. It seems that
students see learning Spanish as a way of becoming more connected to their
Mexican heritage.

Like Olga, students who had limited or no ability to speak Spanish
growing up, learning Spanish seems to have gained greater importance in
college. In interacting within the Latino community on campus, most students
believe that being bilingual in English and Spanish is not only an advantage, but
also an asset to being accepted in some circles. Nina was very resistant to
learning Spanish when she was young, but now feels that being able to speak
and understand Spanish is “very important,” she elaborates:

I made the mistake of when I was little, not wanting to learn it. I

didn’t see any difference between me and the other kids, so I didn’t
see why I had to learn Spanish, and my dad always tried to teach

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me, but I was so stubborn. I would just run away, plug up my ears,

and start screaming, “I don’t want to learn that.” I’d just run off. I

didn’t want to learn it at all, and now I regret it. Being in the

community, you’re deﬁnitely more accepted if you do speak the

language. Within the Latino community, they deﬁnitely accept you a

lot more if you speak the language.
When Raquel came to campus she had the opportunity to interact with a much
larger Latino community and in doing so, reﬂect on her own ethnicity. Her lack of
Spanish language skills caused her to initially withdraw from the campus Latino
community. During her freshman year, Raquel went to a welcome reception and
felt out of place.

I just remember everybody spoke Spanish, and it just seemed like I

was the only one that didn’t speak Spanish... It was like I never felt

so light before in my life. In [my home town] I could go brag about

being, you know, Mexican, with my friends and be like, “yeah, well,

at least I have culture and like all this stuff.” But then I went to this

reception-dance thing and I like I don't know how to do the salsa or

merengue or anything, I can’t speak Spanish, I can’t even roll my

Rs, so it’s ridiculous sounding when I try to speak. I felt so out of it.
Raquel’s initial reluctance to get involved with Latino activities and organizations
came from her feeling that “there’s some people that if they knew I didn’t speak
Spanish they would look down upon me like, like being a Mexican that doesn’t
speak Spanish.” For her ﬁrst few years at college, Raquel felt her co-ethnic peers
wouldn’t accept her, so she isolated herself from the Latino community.
However, as she met more Latinos, especially in her business major, she
realized that its “not a big deal at all.” Finding the balance in what it is to be
Mexican-American can be a challenge. Raquel explains:

So it’s kind of like double-edged like you have to really relate to

your culture but at the same time we didn’t —I didn’t grow up in

Mexico. I’m an American at the same time and like living in

America. I experienced the American way of living so it’s like it’s

easier for me to relate as an American than it is for me as a
Mexrcan.

Raquel wants to be able to speak Spanish ﬂuently and sees it as a life goal.

However, like so many of the other students in the study, Raquel identiﬁes the

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most signiﬁcant obstacle: “it’s just like a matter of ﬁnding the time now it’s kind
of taken a back burner to getting other goals accomplished.”

Just as learning Spanish helps American born students stay connected to
their culture, learning English has a profound affect on ﬁrst generation students.
The Mexican economy was bad and times were hard when Alma was born in
Mexico City. Her father, a skilled-tradesman with one year of college, moved the
family to Chicago in hopes of a better job when she was just a toddler. The
family stayed with relatives just outside the Projects. Alma remembers how her
brother helped the family learn English when he started school.

I didn’t start learning English until my brother was in kindergarten.
Because he would come home and say, “Mommy, mommy,” in
Spanish he would say it, “I Ieamed a new word in English.” And so
my brother would teach my mom, teach all of us. My dad was a
little more, more ﬂuent in his English because he had taken some
classes in college. And he had also been reading some books and
what have you, so my dad was a little bit more farther along than
my mom. And when my brother started learning that, l was learning
that with him. You know, he would come home, show me the
pictures and he would say “apple,” you know, “say apple” and so I
would go and tell my mom, “Mom, apple, apple,” you know? So I
started learning when my brother started learning, at the same
time.

Both Alma and her brother helped their mother learn English, and later their
younger sister when she was born. The whole family is now ﬂuent in English and
Alma says that at home “sometimes we just kind of speak English and that’s it.
But, we keep trying to force the Spanish because that’s pretty much the only
time we practice it. You know, and it is such an important part of our culture that
we try to practice it still at home.” It took Alma awhile to realize how important
being bilingual was to her.

At ﬁrst when l was little my mom would always say, “come on you

are my interpreter, I need you, I need you to help me.” because she

really couldn’t get along too well. And I would always be just

bothered, “I don’t want to do it. You ask. You know this and this

and that and whatever.” I was always kind of shy and things like

that. But now the way I look at it, | get a thrill out of it, I enjoy, I

totally use it as much as possible. I think it kind of gives me an
upper hand on a lot of things. Not so much just the business world,

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but even for myself. I feel better that I can communicate in more

than just one way--that I could help other people out, because I

know there is a lot of Latino people that don’t speak the language

very well. So sometimes it comes in handy when I’m at a store and

they are trying to communicate with the vendor and they can’t. So,

deStlliind of help them out. | feel good about myself, being able to
o t at.

Alma’s mastery of English, not only helped her family, but also bolstered her
conﬁdence and self-esteem. She later mastered French and considered, for a
time, becoming an interpreter for the United Nations. Both Alma and her father
see Spanish as essential to having a Mexican identity:

How can you call yourself a Mexican or a Latino if you don’t know
your language? I think that it is really hard to kind ofjudge
everyone the same way. Because sometimes it is not their fault, it
is the parents’ fault. At the same time, I’m and I’ve grown more into
it too. I’m very, very into trying to ﬁnd out where I come from and all
of my tradition and my roots and things of that nature. And I know
that we don’t all see everything the same. But for me, it is very,
very important for a person to know their motherland language.
Their home traditions or where they come from. I would expect
that, well not expect that, but I would hope that everyone take the
interest of doing that. Even when someone that might be half
German and half French, I would hope that they take the interest
to, if not be ﬂuent in their language, at least learn somewhat about
it, you know? Take a couple of classes if you don’t already know it
and take interest in doing it.

Alma recalls dating a Mexican boy who didn’t speak Spanish. “My father had a
big problem with that, “ she said, “just for the simple fact that in our eyes, it is a
very, very important part of the culture.”

Bi-cultural and multi-cultural identity

 

As Carlos observed earlier, second and third generation Mexican-
Americans adapt progressively to American culture. Marriage and family lines
begin to blend across ethnic and cultural lines. How does coming from a bi-
cultural or multicultural family affect students’ cultural identity? To Luisa, being
bi-cultural is “just being proud of your culture and embracing it and learning
about it.” Luisa’s relationship with her mother is very close. Her father, of French

and English decent, divorced her mother when Luisa was a young child. Luisa’s

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mother, separated from her Mexican heritage by adoption, has searched for her
Mexican heritage. Luisa talks about her ancestry and cultural identity:

All she [Luisa’s mother] knows about her birth mother is that her
name was [Adela]. She was a migrant worker with a ﬁfth grade
education, and she was sixteen years old, and that’s about all she
knows. She doesn’t know who her father was, or what race he was.
My mom was adopted by Caucasian people, so she doesn’t speak
Spanish as a native language or whatever, and she doesn’t know
anything about her medical history or her ethnic background,
either, so I consider myself either half Caucasian and half Mexican,
or maybe a little less, like three quarters white, one quarter
Hispanic, but I like to think I’m half and half.

Luisa’s mother worked hard to learn about her culture on her own and teach it to
her daughter. Through travel, reading, cooking and history, Luisa and her mother
have explored their heritage and identity as Mexican Americans. Although Luisa
says being bi-cultural “doesn’t make a whole lot of difference,” she has
sometimes encountered challenges in being accepted in Latino communities.

I see it as a problem in the Mexican, or Hispanic, or Latino, or

Chicano communities, because they tend not to accept you if you

don’t speak Spanish, or you’re not round faced, or you’re not a

migrant worker, or you’re not from Texas or California, and a lot of

times I get people who say, “Oh, really? You’re Mexican? I never

would have guessed.” And they argue with me about it, and I say,

“Really, I’m Mexican." And it’s hard, because some people don’t

believe me, or they think I’m trying to squander on the one quarter

or half Hispanic blood, and take a bunch of opportunities, take

advantage of things by using that. I like the culture. I’m proud of the

culture, and the heritage, and everything, so I am grateful for it.

Christian grew up in a suburb north of Detroit. His paternal grandfather
and grandmother worked for an affluent family as domestics after traveling north
from Mexico in search of work. Christian’s father was born in Michigan earned a
bachelor’s degree in business from a local business college. As a mix of Irish,
Polish, German and Mexican ancestry, Christian admits he sees himself “a little
different than most people, you know, most Mexican Americans, because of my
diverse background...l feel like I’m made up of a lot of cultures, but the one that I
relate to mostly is my Mexican American heritage.” He never really knew his

maternal grandparents, and grew up immersed in the traditions of his Mexican

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grandparents and relatives. Still, Christian says having bi-cultural heritage leaves
you open to questions. He explains:

A lot of people are like, “Well, why do you consider yourself

Mexican? How come you don’t consider yourself Polish, or

something?” I kind of see myself identifying myself with my

family and their ancestors, because I’m made up of so many

things, but I’ve been exposed to just one, really one side in the

cultures, and the things that go along with being a Mexican.

Jamie, a sophomore exploring various majors in business, has a rich
family life with close relationships to his Mexican grandparents, aunts, uncles
and cousins. He is the second-generation removed from migrant work on his
Mexican father’s side. His grandfather and other family members remain
politically active in issues affecting migrant farming communities. His mother is of
mixed European heritage. Jamie recalls the looks he and his parents would get
from time to time “because my dad’s so dark and my mom has blonde hair and
blue eyes and the complete opposite.” Like other the other business students
from bi-cultural backgrounds, Jamie noted that acceptance can be hard to come
by from some people of either Mexican or Caucasian descent. Acceptance, he
said is:

pretty much the same either way. I mean, I’ve heard things from

Mexican kids, even on campus, you know, that if you’re not 100

percent Mexican, you’re not in the clique or, and white people, too,

but it’s the same thing. It’s, it’s not just, you know, white people.

They’re made out to look bad. It’s everybody.

When he thinks of his own identity, Jamie says , “I just think of myself as
American before I think of myself as Mexican. I’m an American with Mexican
descent and l, I try not to look at people like, like that, their ethnicity and things
like that. I don’t think it’s that important really.”

Raquel expressed a similar feeling. Her father is of Mexican heritage and
her mother is Caucasian. She grew up in small, predominantly white town and

didn’t begin to realize she was any different than any of her classmates until she

entered middle school. Raquel said it was an interesting “revelation” for her when

73

she realized her Mexican heritage set her apart. “I felt special then, like I had this
something, this background that I could actually say look at my history,” she said,
“Look at the culture that l have and it’s different than the European culture that
you guys identify with.”

I remember this day I realized I was slightly different. It was when I
had a cousin staying with us, like a weekend or something, and she
got there on a Friday afternoon and I came home and her and my
mom were talking, and I walked in the middle of their conversation,
and the ﬁrst thing they asked me was when I entered in was “What
do you consider yourself to be?” And I had no idea what they were
talking about. I think I might have been in seventh or eighth grade,
and l was like “what do you mean?” And they said, “When
someone asks you ‘what are you,’ what do you say?” And I’m like
“American?” and they just thought that was hilarious. You know
why? They were talking about how I have another cousin that’s half
Mexican, half Caucasian, and she referred to herself as being
white. She didn’t consider herself being more Mexican, she
considered herself Caucasian. And, there was this thing about
Mexican ’cause my cousin that I was with that afternoon talking to
my Mom, she’s, she has the same situation too, and she considers
herself Mexican. And I never really thought about that. l was like,
well, what’s the difference? You know, like why should you have to
consider yourself either Caucasian or Mexican? We’re Americans.

Sometimes it’s difﬁcult to have to divide yourself between multiple cultural
heritages. Yet with each institutional or employment form that requires it, Raquel,
like other bi-cultural students have to decide what box to check:

When I check off that box on the application forms or whatever, I

always put Mexican. I guess it’s because of the different races and

cultures that I have, Mexican is the strongest, like I’m half Mexican

but I’m only like one-eighth German or whatever, so it’s like

Mexican stands out more than the other ones.

Carmen grew up in a multicultural urban city. After her parents separated,
her mother of northern European descent raised Carmen. Carmen’s father was
the ﬁrst generation of his family to be born in the US. after his Mexican parents
moved to Texas for farm work. Her father came to Michigan to work in
automotive factories. Like Raquel, Carmen did not really pay much attention to
racial or ethnic differences, although things changed as she got older. In high

school, she began to notice that there were different racial cliques “Mixed

74

students had a lot of problems with it,” she said, “it was like ‘well you don’t hang
out with us, so you are not black or you don’t hang out with us, ‘cause you are
not Mexican enough’ orjust stuff like that." Carmen found herself hanging with
other bi-cultural students. In college, Carmen found herself associating mostly
with Latinos, although she admits:

I don’t know how it happened that way ‘cause I’m very light

complexioned as you can see and a lot of people put me in the

category of white or Caucasian. I don’t really look out to say, oh I’m

just going to hang out with Latinos or I’m just going to hang out with

blacks. I don’t, I don’t look at it like that. It just happens, it just

happens to be the person who I get along with. I don’t really say

well they share my culture or what not, so I’m just going to be with

them.

Carmen is very active in a variety of Mexican American professional, cultural and
social organizations in college, holding a variety of leadership positions. Although
all of the bi-cultural students expressed some feelings about not being fully
accepted in either Mexican American or other cultural groups, all of them seem
to have sought to explore more about Mexican ancestry in college. The students’
participation in Latino peer groups and student organizations seems to build a
sense of cultural conﬁdence or efﬁcacy in the bi-cultural student, as they explore
their growing sense of cultural identity in a world that often tries to force singular
cultural choices.

Having explored some of the cultural and family contexts students bring to
the college experience, we turn now to looking at the signiﬁcance of personal
and social factors that shape students’ conceptions of a business identity and
how their college experiences facilitate the intersections of career and cultural
identity.

Cultural Connections in College & Social Learning
The college experience is a powerful catalyst to manifesting intersections

of cultural and career identity. Intersections of career and cultural identity also

suggest a bi-cultural identity for the students in the study as they seek to balance

75

their cultural selves with their emerging identity as a business major. The
challenges inherent in striking such a balance come from a variety of factors.
First, there are no Mexican American faculty members in the college of business
to serve as role models. Most Latino/a faculty at Michigan State University are
clustered in the social sciences or liberal arts. Second, there are markedly few
Mexican American students (5%) enrolled in business majors. Third, and
perhaps as a result of the ﬁrst two, the cultural landscape is one that favors
Latino/as in helping professions, particularly those that address cultural issues.
A variety of social learning processes facilitated the students’ evolving cultural
and career identities through their college experience.

Social learning emerged as a salient element in students’ identity process
on many levels. Congruent with Bandura’s self-efﬁcacy theory, self-conﬁdence
emerges as students make comparisons between themselves and their peers
and others (vicarious experience), as well as their own mastery of experiences
related to their personal, academic and career development. For all of the
students in the study, peer associations were a signiﬁcant inﬂuence in fostering
links between professional and cultural worlds. Relationships with co-ethnics
both in business degree programs and those in other ﬁelds of study were
especially interesting as students’ cultural and career identities intersect in their
college experiences.

Mastering Transitions

The transition from high school to college is a challenging one, especially
so for ﬁrst-generation college students. The process of orienting to a new
environment can be a source of personal mastery in and of itself. The thought of
college made Richard nervous the closer the time it came for him to go. When he
was selected for a weeklong competitive summer business program Richard

looked for a way out. He thought he had it when his cousins were coming for a

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visit from out of state, but Richard’s mother wouldn’t hear of him staying home.
His comfort level immediately changed when he was assigned to a project team
with a Mexican American peer counselor. “I saw him up there like, you know, the
only Mexican or whatever and it was like, I want to be on his team. I want to be
on his team.” Richard said, “I got to meet him and then he showed me what I
needed to do, like starting steps or whatever, what I needed to do to be
successful.” Having a role model he could relate to helped Richard to connect
socially and prepare himself for the challenges his ﬁrst year was to bring.

Eliana participated in a weeklong minority orientation program just in the
summer before she started college. It helped her to feel more comfortable as she
was able to some students that she was able to hang out with in her ﬁrst few
weeks at school. Despite the early orientation, Eliana’s ﬁrst week was difﬁcult, “I
was lost. I had my map, looking everywhere. I was scared. What if I miss a
class? What are they gonna do?” For social support, Eliana started going CRU
meetings, supper clubs and “all the dances and stuff they threw for the Latino
welcome receptions.” The friends she made through attending Latino events
took care of her during her ﬁrst couple of years. Later, they encouraged her to
join a multicultural sorority with them, rather than a Latina one. Eliana explains,
‘the reason I guess I chose it is because it was multicultural. I don’t like just
hanging around with just Mexicans... | just decided that would just be better for
me to get to know other backgrounds better ‘cuz it would be better for my degree
and out there when I go out to work.”

Alma looked at college as an opportunity for a personal makeover.
Struggling with memories of alienation in middle and high school after her family
moved to Michigan, Alma talks about her goals for college:

My ﬁrst year I came in saying to myself, ‘It is going to be different

and this is my opportunity to change my whole image, my whole

appearance, my whole—what’s the word-my whole reputation,
everything around, totally different. You know, and I’m going to

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know a lot of people and I’m going to meet everyone, I'm going to
say hi to everybody and I’m going to go to all of these meetings
and learn about everything.’

True to her word, Alma got involved, in fact, she said the greatest challenge for
her in college has been not getting too involved. Her socialization with peers led
her to choose business as a major. About a month into her freshman year, Alma
met some Latino students who told her about NAHBS. She thought it was “cool”
that they had meetings and that companies actually came out to talk with them.
When Alma met Miguel, one of the group’s ofﬁcers, and some others she found
something she wanted to be a part of:

And he [Miguel] said, ‘Why aren’t you in business? That’s where it’s
at, that’s where the money is at. And look at us, we are having so
much fun, we all met there.’ And that I was jealous, you know. I
wanted to hang around with them too and you know, go out and
have fun. I thought maybe I should just go into business. So I
thought I would go into hospitality. So then I decided, okay
business is everywhere nowadays anywhere you want to go,
anything you want to do. You have to know something about
business.

Alma switched her major to hospitality business and got involved with NAHBS.
Although the major was fun, she began to look at how her major choice would ﬁt
with other goals in her life. Her decision to change majors from Hospitality
Business to Human Resources was partially inﬂuenced by the time she knew a
career in hospitality would take from her family life. The reaction of one of her
supervisors to her major had an even greater effect.

One of my managers asked me what I was majoring in. I’m sorry I
told him hospitality-business. He said, ‘What? You are joking,
right?’ And I said, ‘No.’ And I was, at ﬁrst I was kind of hurt that he
said that to me. But then afterwards he said, ‘Alma, you are going
to college to a Big Ten, Michigan State University school and you
are studying to be what I’m right now.’ And he said, ‘you know,
that’s really cool. You are going to have your degree and
everything, but I’ve been here since I was 18 and now I’m a
manager. I worked my way up or what have you. I’m going to
school because I want to go to school, but to get a job like this, you
don’t really have to go to school and things like that.’ ‘You know,’
he said, ‘you are better than that. You are so much better than that.
And, look at me, I’m always here 12 hours a day, I don’t get to
spend that much time with my family and I know that that’s not

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what you want.’ And he pretty much opened my eyes up to a lot of

that. Even though it is a fun industry to work in, it is a lot of hard

work. Not that I’m scared of hard work, but there are also other

priorities in my life that I’m not willing to give up.

Balancing multiple life goals with career choice is a signiﬁcant developmental
task for each individual. The conﬁdence that Alma gained through NAHBS and in
choosing an initial major in which she had some experience created a
comfortable foundation that later allowed her to incorporate and assess life goals
she hadn’t thought of initially when choosing her major. Now a Human
Resources major, Alma feels she’s found a better career ﬁt. Human Resources
was the “the best way to go and still be able to work with people,” she said.

For Luisa, college gave her the opportunity to further explore her heritage
and to be part of the Latino cultural community. She was a sophomore when she
started noticing the diversity around her and “thinking that was something I
wanted to be part of.” Luisa joined NAHBS, “then that threw me into CRU, and
everything else associated with it. The different Latino parties, and fraternities
and sororities, and things like that.” By getting involved in Latino activities and
groups on campus, Luisa found new awareness:

It made me realize that I needed to be more educated about my

culture, and my, like, heritage, and blood lines and stuff. It changed

me just by making me more aware of the different struggles on

campus, and different cultures, different things that people are

struggling with, different viewpoints, and different voices.

Although Carlos was very secure in his own Mexican heritage and migrant
experiences, he also immersed himself in Latino organizations. He said what
drew him to CRU was the chance to interact with other Latinos, an opportunity
he didn’t have growing up in a predominately white rural town. Socially, Carlos
said he felt comfortable. He had white friends from his hometown he’d hang out

with socially. But the CRU community offered a chance to learn and expand his

awareness of different Latino cultures:

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I just went there because it was something I wanted to do,

something different. I wanted to see how other Latinos from

different regions react, or have their perspectives on anything. So it

was just more of a learning thing... .to learn a little bit more about

different cultures. You have Puerto Ricans, you had Columbians,

you had Uruguayans, and so basically that was part of the reason.

It’s not because that’s what made me ﬁt in. No, because obviously

where I grew up I didn’t ﬁt in if you could call skin or culture the

standards, so that wasn’t it.

All of the students in the study were open and eager to learn about other cultures
and experiences as they talked about friends and peers in college. Generally,
students believed, as Eliana expressed earlier, that their willingness to learn
about different perspectives would be a valuable asset to them in the business
world.

As with nearly any large public university, there are a broad spectrum of
organizations and cultural activities for students to engage in at Michigan State.
Students’ involvement in co-curricular activities and peer groups tend to enhance
their sense of belonging in the campus environment. The co-curricular
involvements of the students in the study were very diverse, from involvement in
fraternities and sororities to political activist groups to academic and professional
organizations. As students make choices about the activities they wish to
engage in, there are salient implications that impact cultural and career identity.
Relationships with co-ethnics in business

As the smallest cultural population enrolled in business, being part of a
culturally relevant professional student organization was an important inﬂuence
in the students’ career and cultural identities. The absence of cultural role
models on the business faculty and the relative absence of Latino/a cultural
support within the minority program in the college, left co-ethnic peer
associations as the only viable means of cultural support for the students in the
study. All but three students in the study were active members of the Native

American and Hispanic Business Association (NAHBS), although all students in

80

the study had attended a meeting or participated in a NAHBS event. 'We're
friends ﬁrst, but we're organized and we take care of business," said a former
ofﬁcer of the organization.

NAHBS grew out of Latino and Native American outreach efforts by a
minority support program housed in the college of business. At ﬁrst, the group
existed informally and without a real structure. However, in 1994, eleven
students attended the National Hispanic Leadership Conference in Austin, Texas
with an adviser. The impact of the conference on the students was
“ovenNhelming.” Christian explains, “It was the amount of people there, and it
was just, dressing up in a suit and trying to be professional and having a resume.
It was one of my ﬁrst aspects into the business world and it felt great. I loved it. It
was just great, and bonding with the people. I felt like the people, the people that
we went down there with, the group members, we were stronger, and we built
relationships upon that, business relationships.” The national conference is run
by the National Hispanic Business Association (NHBA), a student run
organization founded by students at the University of Texas at Austin. When that
ﬁrst group of students came back to campus, they became the ﬁrst chartered
chapter of the organization in Michigan. The connection to NHBA helped give the
group a structure and a business purpose to attend the leadership conference
each year.

The national conference has an inspiring effect on all the students in the
study who have been able to attend. Jamie talks about his ﬁrst experience going
to Austin and the impact of being part of a conference with 600 Latino business
students from across the country. At NAHBS meetings he said, “There’s 15
people and then you got down there and there was a huge convention center of
people just like you and all working to do the same thing. You don’t think that big

sometimes. You see your little group and, you know, that’s it. But there’s so

81

many more people out there that are doing the same thing.” Asked if the
conference inﬂuenced his decision to major in business, Jamie is quick to
respond. “It didn’t affect my decision on business. It did affect my decision on
how much harder I’m gonna work, that you know, there’s not just 15 people,
Mexicans, that companies are looking at for jobs, that there’s a ton more and you
really got to get above the average guy.” The conference’s impact on Alma
helped her to realize new possibilities and gain conﬁdence in herself and her
college career.

Never in my mind would I have thought, oh yeah, when I go to

college I’m going to be traveling and I’m going to have the

opportunity to go to Texas on a business conference. Nothing like

that. l was just so taken back by the idea that, “Oh my gosh!” you

know, “I’m only how old and I’m doing all these things? I can’t

believe the opportunity that I’ve had!” and I was just in glory. I was

just having so much fun and I learned a lot.

Through the conference and career fairs, Alma’s astonishment and conﬁdence in
herself grew. She has cultivated pretty good relationships with some of the
corporate representatives that she “always sees” at conferences. She’s
astonished that they know her. “They’ll go like ‘Hi Alma, what’s up?,’ Alma
gushes, “Never would l have thought that they would recognize me like that or
remember my name.”

The professional contacts students make at conferences and career fairs
are signiﬁcant, but in terms of the national conference, networking among peers
is an important objective of all of the students who attend. Carlos explains that
networking is building a future:

You get to network with colleagues from different universities, from

different regions that don’t have the same challenges that you do.

They have different challenges than you do... You really get to

learn what’s going on in different areas of the nation. This is

something you have to learn how to do because you’re not only

going to be dealing with the mid-west perspective. You’re going to

be dealing with what’s going on in the Southwest, East Coast,

maybe, down in Montana. Who knows? You’ve really got to

understand the people and why they make decisions based on why
they make those decisions.

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The connection to the national Hispanic business community is signiﬁcant.
There’s no doubt that being part of the National Hispanic Business Association
had a signiﬁcant impact on the students in the study as a group and individually.
Individual students found new possibilities for their future in business and gained
vital perspectives on the national Hispanic community and the world outside
campus. But, perhaps most importantly is the effect of being part of the
organization has on the students’ individual and collective self-efﬁcacy. “You
know, it makes you feel good. It really does,” Carlos said, “Knowing that you’re
part of this great organization that’s run by students that gets national
recognition. It makes you proud of what you are and what you accomplish, and
what you can accomplish down the road.”

The exposure to nationals, created a stronger, more cohesive group on
campus. By seeing the accomplishments of Latino business students across the
nation, NAHBS’ members were convinced they could do the same. A good
example of this comes from Christian:

Probably, the main thing that I got out of it... is that anything is

possible. When we came together, and Luis and Miguel were

talking about having our own conference. We were still kind of a

small group, and we went down to Texas, and we saw this great

thing that they were doing down there, and Luis gave the group the

idea, “Why can’t we do that?” And I was like, “Wow, I didn’t even

think about that. Why can’t we?" And he’s like, “Let’s do it.” And we

did it. And that just proves that with great people, and great

motivation, anything can be done, and I’ve lived my life by that, and

that’s really, that’s one of the main things, that we pulled together,

and we said, “We don’t have money. Well, let’s raise the money.”

And we did it. That just added to what I strongly believe in.

The group did sponsor the ﬁrst Midwest Hispanic Business Student Leadership
conference which drew college business students from Ohio, Indiana, Illinois,
Wisconsin and Michigan. However, their primary objective has always been
primarily focused on building a supportive, peer-driven Latino community in

business. Alma describes it as a “family environment. You feel a lot closer to

83

people that are there. And these are people that you will always keep in touch
with, you know, forever.” For Julio, that sense of family was important in how
NAHBS members pulled together to support each other socially, academically
and professionally. “l formed a lot of study groups with them,” he said, taking
pride in the way he and his peers helped each other out. Alma concurred:

So, it has helped me a lot to learn about what business is and what

it is supposed to be and what it will be in the future...NAHBS has

really put all of those things or most of those things into

perspective. As well as giving me another support group for myself

in being able to discuss some things that you might be

embarrassed to or shy to talk about in a huge classroom in front of

500 people. Just like resume things or about how to dress for an

interview or how to speak to someone or that you have to return a

letter to them when they send you or that when you have an

interview with them.
The group's responsibility to the Latino community extends beyond just their own
membership. As a whole NAHBS has been committed to hosting groups of
college bound migrant students from Texas, reaching out to Cubano refugees,
preparing care packages for fellow Latino students and low-income families, as
well as serving as mentors for Latino middle school students. Socially, members
of the group often attend parties together and maintain contact with alumni from
the organization who have graduated. Upperclassmen regularly share stories
and updates on the successes of NAHBS alumni who have graduated. A former
ofﬁcer and well-known alum describes the most important role NAHBS has for its
alumni and members is "reaching out to our brothers and sisters to help them
achieve what we have achieved."

Through many of the interviews conducted for this study, students
referred to the role modeling and mentorship they had gained from other NAHBS
members. Eliana and Carlos are excellent examples of the community value for

giving back and helping others. Eliana said she tries to connect with freshmen

that are coming up from her high school. “Like this one young girl,” Eliana

84

explained, “she was talking to me and telling me she was really scared, that she
feels homesick. That she wants to go back home. She feels real lonely but that
she thinks she’s gonna be able to be alright. I just started talking to her and now
we’ve been hanging around with her more and making her feel more welcome.”
Carlos takes a more professorial approach in helping freshmen and new
students beneﬁt from his experience:

I would get involved in the community to help other Latinos come to

college, just to give them my perspective. And as I grew through

the years, that’s something that I took the initiative to do, is when I

see a Latino freshman, I took time to sit and talk to them for maybe

a couple of hours and just lecture them, whether they want to hear

it or not. I still do, but I still think I could do a lot better to go out and

reach out to the high schools, especially Latino students. And that’s

still something I want to do, but being so active, being involved in

college, and just getting students to do better in college as a

freshman, making that transition is very difﬁcult.
The community support that NAHBS members have created is an especially
powerful one. Not only does it create a safe place for students to explore their
cultural heritage and career identity, it provides them with a sense of collective
efﬁcacy in helping each other to reach their goals both in college and beyond. In
the absence of available role models, the group created it own role models in
each other, building on the success each other through vicarious experiences
and other social learning processes. All of the students in the study expressed
the desire to give something back, to make a difference in their families and
communities and most equated that with personal achievement and ﬁnancial
independence.
Relationships with co-ethnics outside of business

Most of the students were introduced to the Chicano/Latino community on
campus by attending a welcome reception/dance or from a visit from a minority
aide who contacted them in the ﬁrst few weeks of school. One of the focal points
for the Latino campus community is the Culturas de las Raza Unidas (CRU), a

student organization dedicated to increasing awareness of and programming for

85

social, cultural, academic and political issues impacting the Latino community.
CRU serves as the informal umbrella organization for other groups such as
Movimiento Estudiantil Xicano de Aztlan (MEXA), the Puerto Rican Student
Association, Sociedad de Estudiantes Dominicanos, and Latino fraternities and
sororities. What drew most students to CRU was the chance to connect socially
with other Latinos and cope with issues of being at a predominantly white
university.

One student’s involvement in CRU and MEXA were stimulated by her
experiences with racism from rural co-workers. “I think that really enraged me. I
think that set the stage for the ﬁrst couple of years at Michigan State,” she said,
“I was part of the extreme leftist, political activist group called MEXA and l was
very militant.” After awhile, she became disillusioned with fellow students in the
organization

They talked a lot about recruiting Mexican students to Michigan

State, but it was a complete paradox, because a lot of those kids in

MEXA were cutting classes, were getting pregnant, were

completely reﬂecting the stereotype that we have in the United

States, about Mexican workers. I think that they were reacting

on all the stereotypes that had pushed on them, and used that

energy. Used it in the same way that it was used on us. It was like,

you know, “You treated me with such contempt for such a long

time, that now I’ll do the same thing to you.” And somehow that

was supposed to be good.

Although she was never involved in the organization, Sara was supportive of the
activist causes that CRU and MEXA took up, such as better rights for migrant
workers and is a little ashamed when she admits “being an Hispanic woman on
campus I should be involved with it, but I didn’t. I mean you can only be involved
in so many activities and put your heart into so many things.” Yet the extremist
actions of the organization cause her to question what progress means.
Recalling a hunger strike in support of the United Farmworkers boycott of

California table grapes, she explains some of her concerns for her peers:

86

It is a worthy cause, it was a worthy cause and it is getting better

now, but to not eat and make yourself sick, I mean the people that

ended up in the hospital, I mean, I’m wondering how they did on

their, on their scores in their classes that semester. It is a great

cause, but when it was all done and over with, nobody erased

those zero points that they may have gotten on the homework or

anything. And for me the best way that I can help my community is

to become the best person that I can be.

Olga expresses a similar sentiment. While there may be a place for radicalism for
some people, she sees a difference in the ways she and her Latino peers in
business positively inﬂuence the image and progress of the cultural community
and the issues it faces:

I see people progressing, studying, really trying to improve

themselves, and I think it’s just much more positive. I think we

express our feelings by achieving. We don’t necessarily have a

dialog, but at least we lead by example. You know, we keep on

doing well, and then there’s a pattern, “Well hey, these kids are

doing well. They’re smart kids.” And even if there’s no dialog, at

least I know that the administration sees, ‘Hey, there’s Alma

Martinez, there’s a leader, a professional’ then good.

Still other students in the study found they weren’t satisﬁed just focusing on
cultural or racial issues to the detriment of academics. “I joined NAHBS because
it was a cultural group but it wasn’t like MEXA or something or CRU. It was just
kind of, you know, we’re different but we’re still gonna take care of business and
worry about both racial things and school, not just racial,” said Jamie. He still
attends CRU meetings and events from time to time, but feels his cultural and
professional home is with his Latino peers in business.

Amanda isn’t sure how much she is respected by her peers in the Latino
student community, especially those that are involved in the more political
groups. Although she actively mentors youth in the community and has arranged
numerous community service activities with other Latino business students, she
senses that her commitment to the community may be questioned by her non-
business student peers:

They always seem to be like social, you know, like they want to be

social workers and they seem to be more geared to the social

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aspects of helping out the community. And I think that maybe when
I tell them I’m a business major that they don’t see that as helping
the community because, you know, I’m not directly going and
helping the Latino youths or whatever. I’m going to be in the
corporate world. But I think I am helping the community. I see it as
helping ’cause I’m getting up in the corporate world. There’s not
that big of a population of Chicanos in the corporate world, and it’s
not going to happen unless [more of us] start joining that workforce.
I don’t know if they’re [Latino peers] that open to realizing that what
I’m going to be doing is also helping the Latino community.

Two students in the study had strong feelings about their acceptance within the
larger Latino community on campus. Luisa talks about feeling like an outsider in
organizations like CRU and MEXA:

I don’t identify with them because they don’t identify with me. Like,
they see brown face and Spanish speaking as the only people that
should be there, and they see people like me, or what I perceive
them to see me as, is like a half-breed “wannabe”, and so I don’t
associate with them just because they’re very racist against their
own people, and against other people of other cultures. Like, there
was a comment at a CRU meeting where we were talking about
new years resolutions, and this one girls resolution was to get
along with all the white people on campus that were annoying her,
you know, which is pretty racist to me. I think they’re very closed
minded, like, they won’t call themselves anything but MEXA, like
they’re not Latino, or Hispanic or Mexican, or whatever, that they’re
just MEXA. ljust think they’re very closed minded and ignorant,
and, I guess they’re not ignorant, but closed minded and
aggressive.

It was important for Luisa to continue to explore her Mexican heritage in college,
as she and her mother had done as she was growing up. It was hard for her to
face exclusion from other Mexicans that seemed to tell her that she was not one
of them.

When Andres chose to pledge a predominantly white fraternity during his
freshman year, it had a signiﬁcant impact on his potential for relationships in the
Latino community. Although he was approached by Latino fraternities and men’s
clubs even before coming to campus, he found a home in his fraternity. Andres
said the reaction of Latino peers to his choice was hard to take:

because I chose the fraternity that I’m in now, the predominantly

white fraternity, I got a lolta, a Iotta, a lotta dirty looks, snide
remarks. I was very unaccepted by my own culture up here. Just

88

because I’m Mexican doesn’t necessarily mean that, I would have
to go that way [by joining Latino organizations] and I didn’t. I think
I’m more comfortable where I am now, that it’s more of who I am I
guess. But being snubbed by them just because I didn’t choose to
do the things they did. I would get the dirty looks and people
stopped saying hi.

The social support Andres has gotten from his fraternity has been very important
in his college life. He admits he hates to be alone in doing anything and thrives
on his frat brothers” support. Yet Andres struggles to understand the exclusion
he experienced from the actions of his Latino peers:

I mean, I guess everybody can have their own opinion of who I am
and, I mean, what I am but I think, I don’t understand why
somebody would call me a sellout. Why? Because I don’t, because
I’m not the stereotype Mexican? So I don’t, I mean, this is gonna be
like, you know, an off the wall comment, it’s like so I don’t work in
like a tortilla factory so that means I’m a sellout because I went to
college and because I’m making something of myself. This is what
I’m saying, that somebody might call me a sellout for, you know,
because I go to a big time university and I'm going to have a
decent job when I graduate college, that would make me a sellout.
In the end, I think that would make you more proud of me because,
you know, I’m a Mexican who’s making it. A lot of Mexicans don’t
make it. So I’m one that is. So people could call me a sellout, might
be jealousy. Might be the fact that they hate me. Might be the fact
that they hate, you know, college life and what it does to you and
corporate life and whatnot but everybody’s got their own opinion
and I’m not living my life for anybody but me and I don’t feel as
though I’m selling out myself and until that day comes, I’m
completely comfortable with it.

Although his peers might see his choices in peer groups (the white fraternity)
and for a career in business to be in conﬂict with his cultural identity, Andres
clearly rejects the notion that he is any less Mexican because he is “making it.”
The idea of being seen as a sellout or being a cultural traitor by members of
one’s own cultural group is a difﬁcult one. On one hand, students receive
messages that we need more Latino/a professionals, yet on the other there is an
underlying fear: Does crossing borders into new social groups or advancing
educationally or professionally cause an erosion of cultural identity? Olga reﬂects

on that question:

89

I don’t think we have to. I think we could. I think it’s possible. I think,
for me, though, I’d like to retain my culture. I don’t want to change
living in corporate America. I do not see complications with co-
workers, etc. although, you know, if there’s a comment that comes
my way that’s derogatory, I’ll immediately address it, and speak to
the person. I see myself within the community, with the Mexican
American community, ...... but I don’t see that as completely taking
over my life. I mean, ﬁrst and foremost, I’m an American. You
know. I will be a member of “X,Y, Z.” company, and I want to be a
professional woman, and, while, on the one hand, I’m a Mexican
American, I don’t want it to overcome my complete being. Like, I
don’t want people to say, “ There’s that Mexican-American woman.”
I want people to say, “Oh, there’s Olga. She’s an excellent worker.
She’s an excellent asset.” I want to retain my cultural identity, but I
don’t want it to overpower me.

Learning how to balance personal, cultural and career issues is a precarious
challenge that carries the risk of social exclusion. However, peer groups and
organizations that can afﬁrm both cultural and career identity have a signiﬁcant
impact on students’ ability to learn who and what they want to be.

Mastery through experience

 

Experiential learning through the job search process, work experience,
and internships created especially powerful mastery experiences impacting the
students’ cultural and career self-efﬁcacy. According to Bandura (1997) “mastery
experiences are the most inﬂuential source of efficacy information because they
provide the most authentic evidence of whether one can muster what it takes to
succeed.” (p.80) As success through experience grows, so does the students’
self-conﬁdence in their abilities and in their career path. Similarly, unsuccessful
outcomes may cause students to rethink their career choices or hone them more
succinctly. The next phase of the discussion examines how various forms of
experiential learning contribute to the interplay of career and cultural identity.
Internships

The students’ business related work experiences, especially internships,
help to mold the development of career identity as well as foster conﬁdence and

self-efﬁcacy. A signiﬁcant body of research suggests the impact of experiential

90

learning and internships on student’s career development. In the cases of
several students in the study, their experiences also had a signiﬁcant inﬂuence in
negotiating the intersections of their cultural and career identities. In the following
examples, the complex interplay of the student’s hopes, fears, goals and
conﬁdence with their experiences provide a salient view of the identity process.

Self-conﬁdence and initiative can make all the difference in a student’s
ability to secure an internship. Tom is an outstanding sophomore student. After
working in restaurants and grocery stores, he is looking forward to his ﬁrst
internship with the automotive company he has always wanted to work for. He
got the internship by sending his resume to the company through the on campus
recruiting system and was proud when he was selected for an interview.

They had a minority career fair was like a week before my

interview, and I remember I went in and talked to a recruiter there

and he kind of told me that usually they don't take sophomores, so

I was kind of scared as far as that went, because I wanted to get in

there, so I made sure when I went to my interview, that I said

something about, I’m only a sophomore, but I feel that I can

perform with anyone and if given the opportunity, they wouldn’t be

disappointed. They told me that was a big reason on why I got the

internship, you know, because I came back around at the end and

told them that. And that really impressed them. So that’s really how

I got the internship, and it went on from there.

In his earlier work experiences, Tom said he learned about what goes on behind
the scenes in business like “The order of command, you know, how efﬁcient are
these companies working, and stuff like that.” Even working as a grocery stock
boy, Tom was aware of how products were placed on shelves and made note of
how things were different in competitor’s stores. Looking ahead to the summer,
Torn talks about what he’ll be doing in his internship this summer and what he
thinks it will be like:

Tom: I’m going to be in their ﬁnance department. I think I’ve
kind of been brieﬂy informed of my duties. I’m going to
be working at the truck vehicle center, and they’re
looking, companies like that, at cost reduction--how to

make the most money out of what they have, what’s
the best thing to do. I think that’s kind of like what I’m

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going to do. There’s a couple of new trucks coming out,
I know I’m going to be working on, you know, as far as
what are their ﬁxed assets, and stuff like that. So I think
it will be interesting, as far as, you know, this is really a
company that I want to work for and that’s a bigger
company than I’ve ever worked for, so I’m kind of
excited, I’m kind of nervous and scared at the same
time, but, you know, I’m looking forward to it. I like new
challenges, and I think it will work out.

Linda: What do you think your work climate’s going to be like
there? What impressions of big corporate America do
you have?

Tom: I guess one thing that I kind of feel that the

environment’s going to be like, I think a lot of them are
going to be like, “Oh, that’s the intern.” I’m going to be
around all these older people that are a lot older than
me. Not that they’re old, but that they’re older than me,
and that they have been establishing their careers and
they’ve been there awhile and I don’t know if there will
be resentment or if it will just be, “Oh, that’s the intern.”
Kind of a different atmosphere than anything that I’ve
been around.

Linda: What’s it going to take from you to succeed in that kind
of environment?

Tom: I think it’s going to take a lot of hard work, you know,
and I think it’s going to take a lot for me to be open. I
mean, there’s going to be a lot of stuff that I may not
know how to do. I’ve got to make sure that I’m not
afraid to go and ask my manager or ask my supervisor,
if I’m stuck or something like that. I think that has a lot
to do with it, how much you communicate with the
people around you, and not to be afraid of the people
because more than likely they will help you if you ask
them. That’s what I’m looking forward to.

The most important thing Angela said she learned through her various
internship experiences is

a perspective on the real world. [laughs] Like not everyone is, you
know, looking out for you, not everyone is. I don’t know, it is like
you are your own person. If you want to do something, you are
going to do it. Kind of like you are on your own. But, I think like the
main thing is that it’s not necessarily a good or bad environment. It
is not that there wasn’t teamwork and group work, but at the same
time, it is just like you realize you have a lot of responsibility, a lot
of work on your shoulders, like people are depending on you.

As a freshman, Angela worked a summer job with a data management company.

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She found herself doing her work and that of her team partner who showed little
interest in working or getting things right. In the end, her supervisor gave her a
strong evaluation “very dependable, I am a hard worker. But hard worker was my
only evaluation, but it didn’t bother me. It is like I’d rather have something to do
than just sit there.” Wanting to move on to a different experience, Angela set her
sights on an internship in the automotive industry. She interviewed with an
automotive company at the campus career center and was thrilled when they
called her back for an on-site second interview.

they had me take this exam right when I got there. It was like okay,

entrance exam thing you have to pass before you get into GM or

whatever, and all math, right? Not my strong suit. They have it

timed, they have the timer like right sitting on the table and there is

this lady like staring at me while I take the test. And this ticker is

like ticking one thing at a time like this and I’m like doing this exam.

And she grades it right in front of me when I’m done, I’m like

already almost on the verge of tears because I’m like, okay, I did

not pass that. And she is like, “Angela, well maybe we will be

interested in looking at you next year or something. You didn’t pass

the exam,” and all this stuff. And I’m like “Oh my God!” you know?

I’m like, “I can’t believe math is going to hold me back once again.”

I’m like “screw me over out of an internship when I know I can do

the job.” I just couldn’t pass the exam.
Although she was devastated, Angela made a case for herself with the exam
administrator, emphasizing her interest in the company and her conﬁdence that
she could do the job. Angela had surprising results from that conversation: “Even
though she wasn’t even like the person in charge of hiring, whatever, I don’t
know if she conveyed my message or what. But like they called me back and like
I don’t know, like tossed the exam or like scooted it under the ﬂoor, whatever, but
they just kind of let it by, they just let it go and they let me in and I was just so
relieved.”

Angela excelled in her role at the company and returned the following
summer to a more responsible position with more money. Her experiences in the
company taught her differences in managing styles and team dynamics, but

mostly about her major. “I learned a lot about my major and what people do on a

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daily basis. Ah, and it is interesting, like I said, the same things what I learned on
the internship and what I’ve been seeing now is it is always changing. The
company still doesn’t have the right process laid out and they are still, you know,
working at it, still having meetings, and it is fun though, [laughs] I like it.”

Career and Cultural Identity in the Workplace

 

Andres was a general business major toying with the idea of supply chain
management when he got his ﬁrst internship with a Japanese automaker. Active
in student organizations and armed with a competitive grade point average,
Andres went to a campus career fair. Thinking back about how he got the
internship he laughs and remembers “walking around, handing in a resume
which had like waiting tables experience and busboy experience. So I think it
was probably my interview. I’m not, I mean, I’m a pretty easy person to talk to, I
like to think anyway. So that’s probably what got me my internship and it was a
good internship.”

As a sophomore at the time, he didn’t have a lot of business classes, but
Andres took on the challenges of his position.

It was a real job. I mean, I did real, real on job experience. I did the

same thing that all the other people in my group did but looking

back on what I know now of like my job function, it was just like

entry level basis, you know, purchase orders and getting

requisitions and stuff like that from people. So it was a basic job but

I mean, it taught me a little bit about, at least Japanese corporate

world because it deﬁnitely wasn’t the American corporate world.

Yet the biggest challenge for Andres wasn’t the work itself, it was the
environment of being in a small, predominantly white town out of state. “It was a
very bad living environment for me,” he said “a very, very racist town, very
uninviting, unwelcoming. I was miserable.” He found himself driving three hours

every weekend to go home or back to campus. There were two incidents that

Andres shared to explain the kind of environment he found in that small town.

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Walking into work one morning around 7:30 am, Andres encountered an older
white man walking out of the plant.

he asked me if I was going the wrong way and I said, oh no, I’m the

lucky one who gets the star right now. I was joking. He said, ‘Yeah,

all you fucking minorities get the good jobs just because of the

color of your skin,” meaning that he thought that l was, I take it, an

assembly line worker. At [the company] we all wore white uniforms,

everybody from ofﬁce to the president of the company to the

assembly line worker. I guess he assumed that I was going in to

work the assembly line and I got an early shift, ‘cuz there’s like a

ten year waiting period. You have to work nightshift before you get

to work regular morning shift. 80 I guess he just assumed that

because I was Mexican I got the early shift when actually it was my

internship. I worked in the ofﬁce and there wasn’t a second or third

shift for the ofﬁce.
Andres tried to logically analyze the situation thinking that “if he logically would
have looked at me, I was 19. He was 54. Maybe I wasn’t working on the
assembly line but who knows?” Andres was initially going to ﬁle a complaint
against the worker. After some thought, he decided that “it wasn’t worth my time
or my effort to do anything about it. He was gonna think what he wanted to...it
didn’t make me uncomfortable to go and work.” Andres talked about his mentor
at the company about the experience. He describes his biggest reaction to the
incident as realizing that “there are people here [at the company] like that.”

Andres also encountered racial situations in the community that summer.
On his way home from work, he was pulling out of a shopping center when “this
guy on this motorcycle like pulled up and said, ‘Why don’t you go back to Africa,
you fuckin’ nigger.’ I started to shout something back but he was like this 250
pound hippy-looking guy and I thought, ‘you know, if you have enough guts to
stop and say that to me, I don’t know if you have something on you.”’ Deciding it
was best just to drive away, Andres went home to his apartment. Reﬂecting on
the experience, he said

I’ve felt prejudice in my life, I mean, even when I was younger, I’d

be walking around a store with my mom and obviously there’s like
secret security following you around. It’s completely obvious when

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they do it. They think they’re being slick but they’re not. I mean, I
felt it. I know what it’s like. I just, I don’t think I feel it all the time.

Andres refuses to let incidents such as these impact his work or career plans.
Neither experience dissuaded him from pursuing his career in corporate
America. “If anything,” he said, “ it limited my thought of the rest of humanity, but
I don’t think it had anything to do with my job or my job function. That was
secure.”

Many of the students expressed concerns about whether their internship
offers were based on their minority status wondering, “Did I get the job just
because I’m a minority?” Alma laughs when she talks about the impact of the
“Latino Explosion” in popular culture, food, and the workplace. “I almost want to
say that now there is even more help because everybody wants the new thing
and the new thing is Latinos,” she said. “Honestly, you know, I couldn’t believe it
when it was ﬁrst taking place, but it is crazy now, everybody just wants to be a
part of the fad and the fad right now is the Latinos. [laughs] You know, so almost
right now is kind of like, ‘oh no we want you, oh no come back, oh please call us’
back kind of thing. And sometimes I almost think what do they want me just
because I’m Latino or because I can really do it." Luisa believes she’s been
treated differently because of her cultural background:

I think a lot of the opportunities I’ve gotten have been because they

saw Hispanic on my resume. Like, Native American and Hispanic

Students on my resume, or because they knew I was associated

with Multicultural Business Programs and they ﬁgured, “Well, she’s

not black. She must be Hispanic.” And with the name Luisa, you

know, and so I think it has gotten me special privileges and stuff,

like job opportunities, and different opportunities, but only

opportunities. I haven’t seen it hold me back from anything, or

become a burden, or become an obstacle. No one’s treated me

any differently in a bad way because I’ve been Hispanic, but I’ve

noticed people have just given me more opportunities.

After Andres’s experience with the Japanese automaker, his view of
opportunities based on race and culture are markedly different. Realizing that his

ﬁrst internship offer may well have been based on his ethnic background, he’s

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quite clear about how he would respond given a similar situation. “If I was offered
the internship this summer and I went there and I saw that they had 25 interns
and 18 were minorities, I think I would quit because you’re only hiring me based
on the fact that I’m a minority.” Andres expresses a common theme that other
students talked about with regard to their ethnic background and their career
achievement and opportunity:

I guess good in some aspects if it's gonna get me to where I want
to be in life, it’s not a crutch to me. Being Mexican is not a crutch.
It’s not something that I think people should help me because I’m
Mexican. If there is somebody better qualiﬁed who’s white, hire that
person. I don’t want you to help me because I’m Mexican. I don’t
need your help... I don’t want anybody handing anything to me. I
don’t need anything handed to me. I’ll work for what I get and I’ll be
happy with that.

 

Andres’ response to racial and ethnic challenges in the workplace draws on the
conﬁdence he has in himself to work and achieve in his career. The opportunity
to work and prove oneself in the workplace is an important expression of one’s
career and cultural identity. As Bandura has suggested success that arises from
achievement serves as the most powerful inﬂuence on individual efﬁcacy.
Buildinggonﬁdence through experience

Sara’s internship experiences highlight some typical concerns and fears
that students encounter in experiential learning. From ﬁrst encounter to earned
success, her experiences take her through a variety of intersections of cultural
and career identity. Thinking back to her ﬁrst career fair, Sara laughs at the
haphazard way she decided to go, “I got the e-mail the day before and I said,
‘Oh why the hell not, just put on a suit.” With several copies of a resume she had
written only the night before, she managed to get several interviews at the
annual minority career fair. Her initial intention was to just get the experience of
interviewing, however her ﬁrst interviews blossomed into her ﬁrst internship
offers. “I interviewed with several companies. I got job offers from all of them,”

she said, “I don’t know how or why, they just liked something about me. ‘Cause I

97

had no experience whatsoever.” Sara ended up choosing a major hotel chain
because of name recognition and a location that would allow her to be near
enough to her family, but “far enough away where I still had that independence
for the summer.” Sara said it was a great experience for her, despite her initial
concerns:

I was a little bit suspicious as to why they were looking for
speciﬁcally minority students. I didn’t want to when I got there for
the employees to be like, ‘Well they only hired her ‘cause she’s
Mexican and you know, they needed to ﬁll their quota and look at
her, she’s got no experience.’ So I was a very shy about showing
up to work the very ﬁrst day. But, nobody even knew. Nobody even
mentioned anything or even cared. And there just so happened to
be other HB students that were there from MSU that were there too
as well. And they weren’t minorities, so it kind of helped out. I felt
really good about it.

That internship was Sara’s ﬁrst job, and she found herself sorting through some
of her ideas about the hospitality ﬁeld and the kinds of experiences she expected
as an intern from an employer. Her academic department requires that ﬁrst
internships provide a full rotation through all functions of the hospitality business.
However, sometimes those requirements aren’t appreciated by students in how
they are carried out by employers.

Iy the end of the internship I wasn’t too sure if I even wanted to

stay in the industry. I remember going through my exit interview

and telling them all the things that I did not appreciate that

happened to me. The things that I thought should be changed for

improvement and I even said, you know, I’m not so sure I ever

want to come back or ever work for [that hotel chain] again. They

are a great company and everything, but at that point in my life I

wasn’t too sure about it. And I was still a little bit bitter because

they made me do housekeeping work when that’s not what I was

there for. I wasn’t there to learn how to dust light bulbs and make

beds and clean toilets. And they only made me do it for a week, but

I was still, I was just mad about it.
Reﬂecting back on the positives, Sara said that the internship was helpful in that
she had a rotation that gave her a broad exposure to the hotel industry. She
said, “I didn’t know what it was like to be in a managerial position or be in a

supervisor and I got little bit of experience in every, in everything that the front

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ofﬁce has to do with, which is housekeeping, bell stand, hotel operator, being a
desk clerk, all of those things I got to taste just a little bit of everything. And that
was to help me ﬁgure out whether or not I wanted to do this for the rest of my
life.”

Sara’s second internship experience took her to one of the largest hotels
in Chicago. ”And that place was huge when I was ﬁrst there, I got lost for the ﬁrst
week every day. I couldn’t make it from the locker room to the front desk.
[laughs] I’d get lost.” Assigned as a clerk to the front desk, she soon proved her
self a quick study, learning the computerized property management system in
record time. But the greatest lessons Sara learned in the internship were about
people and her ability to lead.

Then one day I show up in the manager’s uniform and the clerks

were pissed. They didn’t know that I was an intern. They didn’t

know that I was there for that purpose. And they thought, one of

them even said to me, ‘Who did you sleep with to get a promotion

so quickly?’ [laughs] It was just like, ‘Excuse me. I’m an intern, I’m

just a little girl.’ So that was rough. But I learned how to deal with it

and I learned how to gain their respect, to get them to listen to me

when I’ve got things for them to do. I learned a lot about myself, I

learned a lot about what it is to have to keep that power distance

between you as a manager and your employees, but also at the

same time, not to be their enemy.

By the end of the summer, Sara knew that she was valued because no one
wanted her to leave. She was asked to stay, but refused in favor of returning to
school. She was surprised when she heard from them so quickly after she left,
“they even called me a month after school started and asked me to come back.
So, I did, I learned so much there.” Upon her return Sara was assigned to a key
role in the front ofﬁce.

I was not only responsible for the daily reports at the ofﬁce -- it is a

whole lot of things that I won’t even go in to, because it is very

technical. But, I had to keep track of what housekeeping is doing,

what the bell staff was doing, what sales and marketing is doing. It

was like the front ofﬁce is the hub of everything, and if I don’t do my

job, then I leave holes for their jobs [and] it doesn’t work like a
machine. There is a gear missing, you know. It is all going to fall

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apart and that was my job. For such a big place where I’m

supervising the staff of maybe 12 desk clerks and taking care of a

2,000 room property, and I’m, you know, just 21 years old. At ﬁrst, I

felt like ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe they just left this all for me and

then they’d all take off and go to lunch.’ [laughs] But I did it, and I

did it well enough to where my superiors recognized that. And they

really said that they were impressed. They did not realize that I

could do those things.

Sara’s experiences represent a coming of age with regard to her personal
achievement potential and career development. But, not unlike other students in
their internships she was able to teach the organization about the potential of
interns to excel in their assignments. Sara is emphatic about the value of her
internships, “I would never trade my internship experiences for anything and I’m
glad that our major forces you could do them before you graduate. l have a
much better idea of what it takes to succeed.”

Olga’s experience in a payment processing center of a utility company
made a signiﬁcant impact on her career development and professional
conﬁdence. After a couple of years, Olga earned more responsibility and
managerial assignments. “I think my boss recognized my talent and my abilities,
and he did have me run meetings, staff meetings, head meetings with district
managers and regional managers.” Making professional presentations, she said
“I really felt like a business person.” Eventually she made a presentation to a few
of the vice presidents. “They were really impressed. They said I did a really good
job. The only thing they said was that I had to take the emotion out of my
presentation, which is completely typical of me, because I’m so passionate about
what I do,” she laughs.

Bolstered by praise and opportunities, Olga eventually was managing
processors in the payment center.

I absolutely loved it. I loved the responsibility, loved the challenges,

and I actually ended up reﬁning the process, so that we would triple

the amount of work that we processed, so, on Saturdays, we’re

used to processing about four million dollars. Well, after, like, my
little experiment, we staited processing sixteen, eighteen, twenty

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million, and you know, the interest on that money was huge. It was

just all those dollars, is very signiﬁcant, especially when you nickel

and dime it, so I was really proud of myself. Just from manipulating

the work, and the process management, which is, that’s the basics

of what I was doing. I didn’t realize the fact that I was doing, like,

managing part of the supply chain. I increased the efﬁciency in

decreasing the amount of workers that we needed, and l was just

so proud of myself. Then, that’s when I realized, “You know what? I

can do this. I can do it.”
Even though she didn’t realize it at the time she working at the payment center,
her experiences were predictive of her eventual major choice in supply chain
management. Like many other students, she didn’t really know about speciﬁc
ﬁelds in business like supply chain management. She knew she wanted
business but ended up ruling out ﬁelds that didn’t’ seem a good ﬁt . “I didn’t like
marketing. I didn’t like ﬁnance. Didn’t like accounting, etc. I didn’t really like
anything, and I didn’t want to do general business. And Econ, you know, in the
college of business, it’s not like a business major, per se. Hospitality Business
was out. Not working weekends and holidays.” Probably one of the most
signiﬁcant inﬂuences on major choice for Olga and the other Supply Chain
Management majors in the study was the inﬂuence of peers and a Latino role
model named Juvé who was just a few years ahead of them. Coming from an
active migrant background and leaving his home state to come to the university,
Juvé was an excellent student who was active in NAHBS. He held several
internships, one taking him to Mexico as an operations intern for a US.
manufacturing company. Olga recalls several conversations with Juvé about
supply chain. “Juvé was studying supply chain and we would just talk about
it...what it involved and everything like that, you know? And then I was like ‘that
sounds like my work at Consumers, and I really loved it. Like, I really loved it,
and I thought, I love organization. I love organizing stuff. I love having things
work in a system and be efﬁcient.’ I said. ‘I think I’d probably be really good at

that.’ And I think I am.”

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Olga was able to land an internship with a Latino manufacturing company
before she graduated. She was recommended for the position with the company
directly by a couple of key advisers at the university over lunch. She was
incredulous that advisers, people she admired, would take the initiative to
recommend her so highly. She reﬂects, “Wow, they really helped me out, and
that’s how I got the job, and that was great. I really had a chance to see a lot of
things, and now that I’m in my classes, my major classes, I can see how much,
how much I’ve learned. How much knowledge I’ve gained just from witnessing
everything in the company.” Being able to integrate her classroom knowledge
helped Olga to afﬁrm her skills and professional competence. She looks a back
on her internship with the manufacturing company as integral in providing a
framework for her career and her education in supply chain management. “I can
see how difﬁcult it would be for students who haven’t had internships, because,
you get all this knowledge. You know, you read and you learn, and take tests,
but it doesn’t mean anything. If you have a framework, you can correlate things.
‘I don’t know if that’s exactly what we did in transportation...Oh, that’s exactly

what we did in transportation. Olga is an excellent case example of the impact
that internships and practical work experiences have on academic learning, self-
conﬁdence and awareness of one’s own career potential and opportunities.
Being able to reinforce her learning with experience and her experience with her
learning is integral to Olga’s developing career identity.

Barriers, Efﬁcacy and Vision

 

Determination and conﬁdence are core issues in developing a career
identity and engaging in the culture surrounding that career. As the students
struggle to establish themselves as a business major in college, they also begin
to engage in the culture of the business profession, adapting norms and

behaviors consistent with the vision of the person they want to be. However, in

102

becoming that person, students also struggle with issues relating to their cultural
selves. How do social barriers, perceived or real, impact the students’ vision for
success in business? Does success mean changing or losing one’s cultural self?
What does it mean to be a successful Mexican American business professional?
As a senior one semester from graduation, Carlos looks fonivard to his ﬁrst
steps in his business career, by reﬂecting on his transition to college. He
explains his philosophy of ﬁrst steps which prove very revealing to his sense of

self-efﬁcacy:

You have no knowledge of what you’re getting yourself into. And
you’ve got to take that ﬁrst step to go in to that type of environment
to ﬁgure out what is going on, and a lot of people don’t like to do
that. Like, for example, I didn’t know anything about college. I didn’t
even know what I was getting myself into. I knew the outcome, or I
had an idea of the outcome of what going through college is, but
exactly what it takes to actually get through college? I didn’t have
the slightest clue. So that’s what I’m talking about when I mean
taking your ﬁrst step, is actually making that decision that I’m going
to do it, and then you’re there. That’s the ﬁrst step.

Conﬁdence has a lot to do with being able to take those ﬁrst steps. Christian
doesn’t believe he’ll encounter barriers that will limit his success in business. He
looks to the example of his father and uncles who have been able to do well for
themselves. However, underlying that is his internal sense of determination and
conﬁdence in his own preparation and ability to take a risk. He refuses to see
issues of culture as anything but an asset:

Conﬁdence, and conﬁdence. I feel you have to be conﬁdent. I feel
you have to be a good presenter, to have good communication
skills, and you have to be a team worker. You have to work with a
team, because I’ve been exposed to a lot of teams up here at
Michigan State, and the people that I’ve talked to, it’s no more just
like you’ve got to turn in a paper and that’s it. You’re going to be
worked in focus groups, and you’ve got to work well with others,
and be conﬁdent in yourself, and uh, one of the main things, one
other thing that I would believe in, is that if you say something,
make sure that you can back it up. Make sure you have facts. You
can’t really go into the business world and say something without
proving it. Don’t go on, like, assumption. You have to be, that’s kind
of to go with your conﬁdence. To kind of make sure you can back
up anything you say with facts. I can see myself being successful
because I’m a Latino, but not seeing myself, I don’t see myself any

103

different than what I said before. Because of the different cultures
that I’ve been exposed to, that is an asset, but coming down as
being conﬁdent, and being a team player and all that, I still think
that has no boundary as to race.

In an opposing view, Andres believes there are barriers that can limit a person of
color’s opportunity and success. He knows that ethnic racial prejudices exist and
he’s experienced them, both from the white rural workers on his internship and
from Latino’s on campus when he joined a white fraternity. Yet, just tell Andres
he can’t do something and his determination quickly focuses on the challenge
and not the barrier:

See, if you tell me I can’t do it then I’m deﬁnitely gonna do it. I

might do it half butt way. I might do it to the greatest, I mean to the

best that somebody else could do it as but I mean, I’ll do. I’ll get it

done. It’s, you just gotta, [with] big challenges you got to chip away

at it and you got to think about it logically, you know. I don’t like

people telling me that I can’t do something. Nobody knows

somebody else’s limits. I’m the only person who knows how far I

can push myself and even, I really don’t think that I know my own

limits, like you know, you only push yourself so far to accomplish

certain things. I don’t know, I have personally never pushed myself

to the brink like I just possibly cannot do this anymore. I’ve never

had to do that.
When Eliana thinks about graduating and her career it has cultural signiﬁcance
for her. She is aware that “not a lot of minorities that actually graduate from
college and get their degree and have those big-time paying jobs out there,” but
for Eliana the most important thing about her education and career success is
“so I could help all my family.” Looking ahead to joining the workforce in
business, she is a little tentative:

It’s kinda scary, I think, ‘cuz it’s just those big, top head people out

there and I think, ‘cuz I’m not, I don’t think I’m prepared yet. I need

to work on my communication skills. I’m kinda scared sometimes

and I get, I’m kinda shy to speak up and I just think I gotta work on

it and it’s gonna be hard ‘cuz, especially when it comes, like I told

you I have problems with interviews, I get so like nervous and I just

don’t know how to be, show my conﬁdence I guess.
Eliana acknowledges that there may be gender barriers she’ll encounter “you

don’t see that many females period at the top or maybe Latina up at the top of

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the corporate America, like the president for example. There’s always just men
and it just seems like they just have prejudice also against a woman being at the
top.” However, Eliana won’t let that stand in her way. Her success, she said
“would just depend on myself how conﬁdent I am and how hard I could work up
to get up that high.”

Angela’s concerns revolve around being an attractive Mexican woman in
Corporate America. She knows that some of her of the managers and colleagues
she encountered during her internships made comments like “she’s too cute”
which sometimes took away from their ability to view her as a professional. She
talks about what it takes to earn respect in the workplace:

It is almost like you want to be yourself, you want to be comfortable

in your environment in corporate America, but at the same time,

you have to constantly know that you are being reviewed, you are

being examined more critically than other people. I guess that goes

the same for even being Mexican and a woman, it is just like I’ve

always heard that tune, it is just like you have to be twice as good,

as the white person next to you in order for people to give you

some respect.

Ideally, Angela believes respect and promotions should be merit based on what
she has accomplished professionally, but she acknowledges, “I don’t think that it
is even possible to go through corporate America as a Mexican-American female
that will be eventually in upper management without having those things (sexual
comments) said. But, I mean I’ll deal with that. I’ve dealt with other things and I’ll
deal with it.”

Angela is very determined to accomplish each of her life’s goals. She
plans to marry shortly after graduation and start a family. “My main dilemma right
there is how I’m going to ﬁt in a master’s degree from a well accredited school
that’s going to want three years of work experience on top of work and then on

top of having children probably at that time as well. It is going to be a big, big, big

mess, but it is going to happen.”

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For Carlos to envision his success in business, he had to learn to be
competitive which, he admits was one of the hardest things he’s ever done...

Only because growing up in the migrant community, you don’t

know how to compete. They don’t teach you to be competitive.

Even in sports. I wasn’t a competitor. I loved to play. I played my

hardest, but I didn’t mind losing, because I knew I did the best I

can. So, in that aspect, of being more competitive to win was very

difﬁcult because in college, that’s what you have to do. You have to

be determined and eager to want that, and it’s something that I

didn’t have because I was never taught.
Looking to the future, Carlos deﬁnes success in his own terms; “It’s setting goals,
focus, determination, knowing that you’re going to have to struggle, the ability to
overcome the struggles, and learn from them...Not only for yourself, but for
others.” But it is in serving as a role model for other Latinos that is the most
important success he wants to achieve:

Like I said, I haven’t been out to the business world, and money is

not everything to me. To me, anyhow. Growing up without money,

to me, wasn’t always my ﬁrst priority. I think it’s more or less the

ability to love what you’re doing. That’s when I feel like I’m going to

be happy. Really, the status doesn’t count. It’s more or less, me

helping others. I think that’s what it is.
Integiating Career and Cultural Identity

In the discussion thus far we have observed how transitions into new
environments, such as college and workplace situations have salient implications
for an individual’s cultural identity and developing career identity. Congruent with
student development theory, students separate from their families and home
communities as they encounter new ideas, people and possibilities for their lives
through their college experiences. As students move through their
developmental process in college, we have seen differences between cultural
and professional value systems emerge. For example, as students succeed or
make choices in favor of their academic and career development, some have
been accused of “selling out.” This suggests that as one endeavors to move

beyond cultural boundaries into new territory, one becomes less connected or

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committed to one’s cultural roots. This notion is not supported by the data
collected from these students. Thirteen of seventeen students overtly expressed
the importance of their career success in making a difference for other Mexican
Americans in communities and businesses. If anything, the students
demonstrate a commitment to integrating their cultural heritage and traditions
into their lives. Maintaining language and family values are indices of the
students’ cultural identity.

The strongest indicators of the students’ cultural values are their
expectations for their children. Most of the students, whether ﬁrst generation or
third generation, spoke of encouraging or teaching their children to learn Spanish
as an important part of their heritage. Consistent with this, Alma candidly
describes her peer group’s expectations to meet and marry a Latino who speaks
Spanish. She said the reason for this is her peers

know that that’s how they want their children to grow up. Learning

both, speaking both languages. See, most of the time what I found

is that their parents have pretty much deprived them of learning

Spanish ﬁrst for the reason that they don’t want, because the way

the parents might have suffered not knowing English and having to

learn it. They don’t want their children to suffer the same way. So,

in that way they deprive them and they don’t realize that they are

going to suffer even more in the future. Because of not knowing

their own true language. Which is sad to me. But even those

friends they see that now too, and they say, “You know, man I wish

my mom would have taught me how to speak Spanish and so and

so.” I just get so mad and frustrated. And I feel sorry for those kids

too, because they really, really want to know it.

Angela wants her children to be ﬂuent in both languages, but more importantly
share her cultural work, family and religious values. She and her Latino ﬁance
have shared numerous conversations about how their children will be raised.
Their wish is for their children to understand their cultural heritage and be

successful in both career and family.

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Perhaps the best summary of how these students’ see the journey that
belies the intersections of their cultural and career identity is in this quote from

The New Mextiza by Gloria Anzaldua:

 

To separate from my culture (as from my family). I had to feel
competent enough on the outside and secure enough on the inside
to live life on my own. Yet in leaving home, I did not lose touch
with my origins because Io mexicano is in my system. I am a turtle,
wherever I go, I carry home on my back.

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CHAPTER 5:

Discussion of Findings, Implications and Conclusions

Successfully crossing borders and attaining one’s academic and career
goals have a signiﬁcant impact on the individual’s capacity for social learning. As
individuals experience success, conﬁdence in their abilities to achieve grows, in
Bandura’s terms, their self-efﬁcacy increases. Self-efﬁcacy is a driving force in
the intersection of cultural and career identity, but it is produced by both as well.
People with a high level of self-efﬁcacy believe in their ability to master different
types of life challenges and environmental demands. As the students in this
study mastered experiences integral to their career development, the conﬁdence
that ensued bolstered their sense of self-efﬁcacy. In short, conﬁdence tended to
support successful achievements; and successful achievements tended to
enhance conﬁdence. In this chapter, I discuss the major ﬁndings and limitations
of the study.

The ﬁndings of this study clearly underscore the salience of self-efﬁcacy in
how students negotiated intersections of career and cultural identity. The
research questions raised at the outset of this study, provide the best framework
for organizing a meaningful discussion of the various ﬁndings which emerged
from my interviews with the students. The primary focus of analysis was to
develop an understanding of the meaning students construct around their
cultural heritage and how such constructions inﬂuence career choices and their

evolving professional identity. The following questions guided my analysis:

1) What personal and social factors shape students’ conceptions of a
professional business identity? What is the relative importance of
these factors?

2) How do the Latino student’s college experiences facilitate change
in the development of a professional identity?

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3) How do students mediate differences between cultural and
professional value systems, if they exist?

4) Do new cultural systems emerge from the intersection of cultural and
professional identity in Latino business students?

In the following section, I discuss ﬁndings of the study around the research
questions that guided my inquiry.

Summary of Findings

 

What personal and social factors shape students’ conceptions of a professional
business identity? What is the relative importance of these factors?

Social, economic, and media images of business professionals had
strong inﬂuences on initial career aspirations despite the striking lack of Latino/a
professional role models. The students generally envisioned themselves having
a life-work style associated with business such as wearing a suit, carrying a
briefcase, and working in an ofﬁce setting. The potential for wealth was another
factor which inﬂuenced students’ ideas about careers in business, although there
were some wide differences in how students’ thought of wealth. For Carlos and
Eliana, both from migrant backgrounds, building a successful career in business
was a means for improving the quality of life for their families. For Olga, a
business career is a means of affording ﬁner things in life, such as vacations and
nice homes. Both family and the economic conditions the students’ experienced
growing up had a salient inﬂuence on the students’ academic and career identity.
Sixteen of the seventeen students in the study came from working class or low-
income backgrounds. The students’ general desire to improve their economic
circumstances and those of their families was a signiﬁcant motivation in their
choices for college and in business as a major, that they perceived would help
them achieve a better standard of living. Students generally believed that the
example of their success would be an asset to the advancement of other

Latino/as in their community.

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How do the Latino student’s college experiences facilitate change in the
development of a professional identity?

The students’ conceptions of a professional business identity were further
shaped through social, academic, and professional mastery experiences
throughout their college years. Overcoming obstacles, such as social adjustment
to campus, academic achievement, and internships, had a positive effect on
students’ self efﬁcacy which supported their emerging identity as a successful
Latino/a business major. Mastery experiences increased students’ personal and
career conﬁdence levels especially as students participated in career-related
activities. The students’ reﬂections on their career related achievements through
internships, work experiences and professional conferences clearly demonstrate
increased career conﬁdence levels and crystallization of career choices.

Peer associations in college impact both career and cultural identity
development. Peer associations with other Latino business majors fostered links
between professional and cultural worlds. Students who participated in the
Native American and Hispanic Business Students organization and the National
Hispanic Business Student Leadership conference beneﬁted from a sense of
collective efﬁcacy by engaging in career related activities with co-ethnic peers.
According to Bandura (1997), collective efﬁcacy is perceived by group members
and can be deﬁned as “a group’s shared belief in its conjoint capabilities to
organize and execute courses of action required to produce given levels of
attainments” (p. 477). Students’ involvement with co-ethnic peers engaged in the
pursuit of similar career goals in business not only created a culturally relevant
support system, but also afforded contact with co-ethnic peer role models at
different stages of their career development in business. This is an especially
salient factor given the absence of professional role models on the business

faculty as co-ethic peer role models appear to have ﬁlled this void.

111

Participation in predominately white or multicultural business-oriented
student groups also provided a source of efﬁcacy in the students’ emerging
career identity. According to Bandura (1986) interactions with peers provide
individuals with the opportunity to compare their achievements and career
competencies in relation to others. Students tended to value interactions with
peers outside their co-ethnic groups as an asset to their career development in
business. By learning about cultures other than their own, students felt they were
becoming better prepared to interact within increasingly global business markets.

Interactions with co-ethnic peers in college tended to foster the
development of a deeper personal understanding of the student’s heritage and
cultural identity. For most of the students in the study, the campus Latino/a
community was an opportunity to connect a much larger group of co-ethnic peers
than they had been in contact with in their home communities in Michigan. As
they interacted with the Latino/a community on campus, students made
decisions about what it meant to be Latino/a especially with regard to language.
Generally, students felt that peers who were ﬂuent in Spanish were “more
Latino/a” than those who only spoke English. Some students felt tension with co-
ethnics outside of business who were engaged in Chicano political activism.
Although business students were generally supportive of cultural causes, many
expressed a level of discomfort with methods they identiﬁed as radical. Students
in the study felt that their greatest contribution to their Latino/a cultural
community would be in their academic, professional, and economic
achievements thereby creating opportunities and ideals for other Latino/as in the
examples they set. Others advocated working within the system to affect
changes important to their cultural communities.

One of the most striking practical implications of the study is the potential

for peer associations to create a sense of collective efﬁcacy to assist students in

112

reaching their educational and professional goals. In the absence of role models,
the students in the study drew support and conﬁdence from their collective
achievements. They often measured their experience and achievements against
their peers as a source of vicarious experience and learning that Bandura
identiﬁes as a source of efﬁcacy information. This suggests that college
educators can support student development and success by supporting student
peer associations that are both culturally and professionally relevant.

How do students mediate differences between cultural and professional value
systems, if they exist?

In transitioning to their college life, students in the study experienced
changes in relationships with both co-ethnic and non co-ethnic peers from their
home communities. As they made choices to pursue academics and college,
some students felt alienated from peers in their home communities. Alienation
from home community peers tended to be greater among students whose high
school associates did not pursue college. Some students, like Sara and Andres
were called “sell-outs” by co-ethnic peers due to their academic and career
choices. Alienation by co-ethnic peers based on these factors indicates a level of
difference between some cultural and professional value systems.

If academic and career success come with the price of alienation from
cultural peers, this could present a perceived barrier to Latino/as who would seek
professional career roles in which Latino/as have been under-represented.
However, students tended to mediate values based on goal orientation, personal
commitment, hard work and achievement, as well as the support of their co-
ethnic peers in business. Their goals integrate cultural, family, professional and
economic elements. Students regarded their academic and career success as
their contribution to improving their families’ quality of life and their cultural
communities. Students in the study demonstrated high levels of self-

determination and refused to accept limitations imposed by familial, cultural, or

113

professional norms. Eliana's determination to further her education despite her
father’s wishes in itself may not have succeeded, if it were not for social Ieaming
and mastery experiences that served to build her conﬁdence as she achieved
her goals. Consider the resilience in which students in the study responded to
prejudice and racist experiences with a commitment to succeed in spite of what
others’ thought. The ability to persevere in the face of bigotry and malevolent
social behavior is mediated by both the students’ sense of efﬁcacy in their work
roles and their security in their cultural identity. As students mediate the
developmental intersections of cultural and career identity, their conﬁdence and
resolve to pursue their goals increases. It is this resolve that sustains students’
choices to join predominately white or multicultural organizations, knowing that
they may face rejection by some co-ethnic peers. The process of mediating
cultural and career values does not seem to lessen the students' commitments to
preserving their cultural heritage or passing cultural knowledge to their children.
The conﬁdence the students demonstrated in expressing their cultural values
and pursuing career goals clearly indicates a high level of self-efﬁcacy.

Do new cultural systems emerge from the intersection of cultural and
professional identity in Latino business students?

In a word, yes. Students’ cultural and career identities are intenivoven in
their pursuit of professional goals. However, as with any change, there are both
beneﬁts and costs. Encountering unfamiliar or untested terrain is often a cause
for apprehension as well as excitement. As students in the study move into new
professional worlds as a result of their career choices, they were at times
apprehensive about the prospect of losing their culture. The underlying fear
being, “Am I really sellout? Am I betraying my culture in favor of my career
success?” The reality that this fear exists stems from the history and

contemporary inﬂuence of social structures that have limited access to

114

opportunity such that those of certain cultural backgrounds cannot equate their
cultural heritage with professional success. For the most part, the students’ dealt
with this fear by relying on the belief that their examples of academic and career
achievement are assets to the advancement of their cultural communities.
Bandura (1997) provides some valuable insight in to the process of social and
cultural change:

New practices usually threaten existing status and power relations.

In addition, adopters (of change) have to abandon secure routines

and learn new ways of doing things. Many are reluctant to go

through the intimidating and tedious process of mastering new

competencies. Those with an insecure sense of efﬁcacy are

intimidated by the new demands and the prospect of

failure...people are understandably wary of forsaking practices of

established utility for new ones of possibly better but uncertain

beneﬁt. Those with limited means or insecure status can ill-afford to

risk mistakes. As a result, most adhere to traditional ways until they

see innovations that produce beneﬁts for bolder adopters. (p. 512)
The students in the study clearly demonstrate high levels of self-efﬁcacy, which
identiﬁes them as “bold adopters” of change, to use Bandura’s terminology. They
are pioneers of sorts, venturing along career terrains where a disproportionate
number of other Mexican Americans have gone before, and potentially, into
corporate organizations that have not traditionally valued Mexican American
culture. We know that identity and culture simultaneously inﬂuence each other on
both psychological and social levels. The process of identity development and
change in social systems such as culture are dynamic, changing over both
individual life cycles and generations. Bandura’s thoughts on the social diffusion
of new ideas and social practices are particularly salient at this point in our
discussion.

Societies are continuously faced with pressures to change some of

their traditional institutions and social practices in efforts to improve

the quality of life. These beneﬁts cannot be gained without

displacing some entrenched customs and adopting new social

organizations and technologies. The beneﬁts of change thus carry

some social costs. The basic principles governing diffusions of

innovation within society operate similarly in the intercultural
dissemination of new ideas and practices... Foreign practices are

115

rarely adoptable unaltered and in their entirety. Rather, imported

elements are usually reshaped and synthesized with indigenous

patterns into forms beﬁtting the host culture. In most instances, it is

functional equivalents, rather than exact replicas of foreign ways

that are adopted. (1997, p. 511)

As students in the study experienced intersections of career and cultural identity,
they mediated new ideas and social practices they encountered along the way.
In doing so, they created new meanings for themselves in what it means to be a
successful Latino/a in business. They tended to weave their values and vision of
family, cultural heritage, career achievement, and community into the fabric of
their lives linking their professional achievement to the advancement of their
cultural communities.

Implications arising from this study of the intersection of cultural and
career identity in Mexican American business students suggest changes in
cultural systems that impact both cultural and professional communities. Further
study following this line of inquiry may help us to better understand the evolving
and multidimensional nature of the identity process as individuals create
meaning in their lives and exert collective inﬂuence on cultural and social
practices.

Limitations of the Study

This study has a number of limitations inherent to qualitative inquiry. First,
the study is bound by time and context. The experiences of Mexican Americans
in college in mid-Michigan may be quite different than experiences of Mexican
Americans in the Southwest, or even in mid-western cities such as Chicago. As
described in Chapter Three, Mexican American and Latino/a students account
for only a fraction of a percent (.5%) of the total number of business students at
the university. Given this reality, the study is also limited by the small number of

participants and the relatively small population of students at the research site.

However, the salient point here is that the Mexican American students involved

116

in this study felt different than other students at the predominately white-
institution, even other minority groups. The variances between the students’
cultural experiences before college were widely distinct. However, it is clear that
students’ college experiences facilitated growth in their cultural identity.
Confronted with a campus community very different from their home community,
students tended to seek out others with similar cultural backgrounds and
experience and built a sense of belonging, or niche, within that peer group.
While it can be argued that most students encounter a sense of difference and
challenge in their transition to college, it is especially pronounced for students of
color. One of the most important things we can learn from this study is how
signiﬁcant peer groups are to the personal and career development of minority
students in college. The Mexican American business students in this study had
no co-ethnic role models on the business faculty at their institution, with most
other Mexican American faculty holding positions in the social sciences and
liberal arts. The study provides evidence that the Mexican American business
students often felt at odds with co-ethnic peers outside of business. The lack of
role models and the differences within the Mexican American cultural community
on campus were unique situational factors that enhanced the students’
development of co-ethnic peer groups among Latino business majors. The peer
group became a self-sustaining role model group that facilitated the students’
ability to affect both institutional change and change in themselves by breaking
away from what they perceived to be cultural norms in their non-business co-
ethic peers.

As identity, culture heritage and career orientations are simultaneously
and reciprocally inﬂuenced by each other as well as other experiences, the study
is not widely generalizable. Most of the students who participated in this study

between 1998 and 2000 have entered the business workforce and are expected

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to be at a different level of identity development as they have integrated new
professional and life experiences. Generalizabilty is also limited by the small
number of participants in the study.

Lincoln and Guba (1985) suggest that the knower and the known are
interdependent - inseparable. My role as interviewer and researcher in this
study may also be seen as a limitation. My experiences as an academic and
student organization advisor to the Latino/a business student population for ten
years may serve as an asset for understanding the students as a relative insider,
but may also be a source of unintended bias. Generally, I believe my experience
and reputation within the Latino/a community afforded me a greater level of trust
among participants I interviewed for the study. However, such trust is also a
great responsibility. I wanted to assure that I did not include any potentially
sensitive information about the participant that they did not expressly consent to
that I might have gleaned from former interactions with them outside the context
of the interview. As I conducted the interviews for the study, I asked some
questions that students felt I already knew the answer to, due to my prior
interactions with them.

Another potential limitation of the study may lie in the cultural bias of the
researcher. As l was engaged in researching a culture different from my own, my
interpretations of experiences are inﬂuenced by my ignorance and bias, however
unintended. In order to assure accuracy in my interpretations, I employed a
number of member checks and professional checks throughout the research
process. I asked probing questions within interviews and repeated responses
that were confusing to me back to the subject in order to verify my understanding
and veriﬁed some of my interpretations with participants as l was analyzing

themes inherent in the data. I consulted with Latino/a colleagues and

118

researchers to assist in the development of my interview protocol and check the
accuracy of my interpretations.
Theoretical Implications

The individual and collective actions of the students in the study suggest a
link between establishing a career identity and the individual's belief that they
might gain power to move beyond the limitations which arise from the traditional
marginalization of Latinos in US. society. This presents a perspective contrary to
social reproduction theory which suggests that cultural and societal structures
are generally immutable (Willis, 1981). The students in the study are actively
constructing a career identity which is reﬂexive not only with their cultural
heritage, but also establishes norms and behaviors quite different from those of
previous generations. The production of norms and behaviors point to a self
determined path that may lead beyond limitations of class and race currently
interwoven in our social structures. I believe that this process is largely
interpretive. The students’ career decisions are derived from their perceptions of
and responses to social structures. It is in interpreting society, that the student
adopts a vision of success which in turn propels him/her into new organizational
and cultural contexts. There again, interpretations of professionalism and
responsibility guide him/her just as they do others who are following a similar
path. The students in the study are engaged, as Willis (1981) suggests, in
mediating structural conditions through awareness of their culture and societal
position. This is where prevailing career theory falls short. In order to develop
a more robust framework of career theory, we must consider the interpretive
nature of the individual’s understanding of their world, through the lens of culture,
gender, socioeconomic status, and social structures. As individuals’
perceptions of the world differ and change over time, so may the individual’s

perception of self, opportunity, and career. This illustrates the multidimensional

119

nature of identity and career development theory as posited by Vondracek
(1992). The gaps in career theory are as wide as the variance of social
structures that effect people in our society.

The Mexican American business students' experiences in this study
provide a perspective on how individuals continue to negotiate relationships with
the structures of our society from an interpretive understanding of culture and

meaning. Recall the conceptual framework introduced in Chapter 4, Figure 1.‘

 

 

 

Figure 1: Conceptual Model for Intersections of Career and Cultural Identity

   
  
 

   
  
   
    

    
  
  

Who do I want to I39?
Aspirations
Goals
Values
Roles

Who am I?
Cultural heritage
Gender
Class
Individual characteristics

       
 

 

 
  

Social Inﬁmce;
Family& friends

  
 

Education Intersections of
Racial a ethnic stereotypes Career 8. Cultural
Gender stereotypes Identity

 
    

Class barriers

  

 

 

Most career theory has focused on the questions “Who am I?” and “Who do I
want to be?” either through personality and interest assessments or stage
development theory approaches. The third dimension “Social Inﬂuences” is a
critical mediating factor in identity and career development which can serve both
enabling and disabling functions depending upon the individual’s sense of self
arising from the ﬁrst two dimensions. It is the interplay between all three

dimensions which best explores individual identity and career development.

120

The role of technology and the rapid changes evident in this information
age pose some signiﬁcant shifts in how individuals conceive of careers and
occupations. Occupational lines and career roles are less distinct than they
were in the 1970s and 19805 giving rise to the concept of boundary-less careers.
Studies that examine the interplay of contemporary psychological and social
inﬂuences with regard to career development and identity are especially needed
in order to facilitate more effective learning experiences in higher education.
Additional inquiries on Latino and other minority student populations using
Bandura’s concept of self-efﬁcacy as a construct may be especially helpful to
critically examine the inﬂuences of social barriers which have historically limited
access to professional careers.

The study also provided evidence that mastery experiences, such as
internships, enhance self-efﬁcacy and the potential for career success.
Employers tend to look for three key elements in evaluating prospective
employees: 1) the capacity for learning generally measured through an
individual’s educational attainment; 2) experience relative to their intended job
function and general problem-solving as is evident from the rise of behavioral
based interviews and pre-employment activities; 3) leadership generally
evaluated by an individual’s initiative and achievements in extracurricular
involvement in organizations, campus and community activities. Consider these
elements through the lens of current career theory. Super gives us the concept
of “career maturity” discussed in Chapter Two. Career maturity refers to the
level at which students accomplish developmental career tasks, formulate career
plans, and understand the parameters of their chosen career (Super, 1957).
Career maturity is vitally dependent on experiential learning and mastery through

self-reﬂection. As evident from the study, students involved in professional

121

organizations and internships gained greater conﬁdence, career certainty, and
maturity through these developmental experiences during their college years.
Bandura’s concept of self-efﬁcacy through mastery experiences is equally
important in understanding the student’s career development process as it
provides a critical theoretical foundation to the elements of experience and self-
reﬂective learning. If we consider the saliency of mastery experiences in the
study along the lines of learning, experience and leadership, a clear model

emerges (see Figure 2).

 

Figure 2: Conceptual Model of Engaged Career Learning

   

     
   
 
   
 
   

LEARNING LﬂDERgﬂP ,
IDENTITY,

EXPERIENCE

Intersections of career and
cultural identity lie in the core.
i See Figure 1.

 

 

 

Imagine the core of this model to be the essential elements of the self (identity,
values, and goals) as delineated in the Conceptual Model of Intersections of
Career and Cultural Identity (Figure 1). Surrounding the core are the three
elements of mastery critical to career development and workplace success: the

capacity for continuous learning, work and life experiences leading to maturity,

122

and leadership which relates directly to individual initiative. The model is
bounded by a circle of continuous self-reﬂection which powers the individual’s
on-going development. The signiﬁcance of the model is that it provides a
framework for understanding a complex and multidimensional development
process. The importance of such a framework is echoed in Olga’s reﬂection of
her mastery experiences in college, “...you get all this knowledge. You know,
you read, you learn, and take tests but it doesn’t mean anything. If you have a
framework, you can correlate things.” A dynamic career development process
requires a model in which you can see how the pieces ﬁt together even if they
are continuously changing.

Pragmatic Implications and Theory

 

This study also has some practical implications for educators and career
services professionals. The ﬁndings of study support the idea that peer
associations which combine both career and cultural activities foster both
individual and collective efﬁcacy. This suggests that educators may be able to
facilitate the growth of collective efﬁcacy through advising and support of student
organizations. Collective efﬁcacy through career-oriented peer associations is
especially salient for groups who have limited co-ethnic role models in college or
in their intended profession. Further studies on the affects of professional peer
associations, career experiences and internships on minority student success in
ﬁelds such as business, engineering and medicine would be particularly
interesting.

There are a number of pragmatic implications for working with ﬁrst-
generation college students which arose from the study. As parents of ﬁrst-
generation and/or low-income college students may not have a clear
understanding of their student’s career options, parent orientation programs may

be particularly helpful in enhancing parents’ understanding of student

123

experiences. Further, ﬁrst-generation college students in the study tended to
have a limited understanding of career options available to them, and the work
entailed with given majors. This suggests that it may be very important for ﬁrst-
generation and/or low-income students to participate in experiential learning
opportunities, such as internships, professional conferences, or site-visits, to
explore their career choices. Evidence in the study suggested that student
mastery of career-related experiences served to enhance student success in
their career ﬁeld and increase academic interest in their major. Additionally,
understanding the conceptual models of the Intersection of Career and Cultural
Identity (Figure 1) and Engaged Career Learning (Figure 2) can help
practitioners in providing a framework for students to understand the dynamic
components of their career development process within the context of their social
worlds.
Suggestions for Research

The review of literature in Chapter 2 clearly identiﬁes the scarcity of
studies on Latino career development, so that more is certainly needed. I would
like to make a few suggestions for researchers based on my experience in this
study. First, in designing cultural studies, we should carefully attend to how
cultural communities are deﬁned and who is deﬁning them. Although this study
focused on the experiences of Mexican American students, more than half of the
students who participated in the study asked speciﬁcally why their peers from
other Latino backgrounds were not included in the study. Latino business
students who participated in the study tended to deﬁne their community pan-
ethnically, perhaps due to their marked under-representation at Michigan State
University. Padilla’s (1985) suggestion that “the decision of Spanish speaking
groups about when to construct an inclusive or collective group identity and

come to share a consciousness-of-kind as ‘Latinos’ is based on the groups’

124

assessment of their goals and their options” (p. 64). Future studies should
consider community standards in deﬁning cultural identity groups and how ethnic
consciousness may vary in expression in different regions throughout the US.

I also suggest a reframing of cultural studies to look at the process of
cultural change as a growth process, rather than one of cultural erosion. How
cultures change over time is a fascinating in the processes we use to make
sense of our world. Contemporary studies which probe individual belief systems
related to culture and change may yield a greater understanding of our capacity
for social survival and human development.

Second, I suggest additional studies are needed that address the
interplay of social inﬂuences on identity and career development, particularly for
multicultural populations and women. Researchers must also endeavor to
rethink career development theory in light of these overlooked populations and
the changing landscape of the world of work.

Conclusions

 

Geertz writes that culture is the webs of meaning that man, himself has
spun. People create cultural systems. Social structures, such as family, peer and
professional associations, gender roles, class barriers and schools impact our
sense of identity as we see ourselves in relation to other human beings. Our
identity is also inﬂuenced by our vision of the future and our conception of the
individual we would like to become. Visions of the future also impact our
conception of the world we would like to live in and the quality of life we would
choose for our families, our communities and ourselves. Often these visions
stimulate change as borders are crossed, requiring a redeﬁnition of what it
means to be a member of a cultural group or a member of a profession.
Individuals who cross social borders, particularly those who have been

traditionally marginalized, create new meanings for themselves as they pioneer

125

into new realities. The cumulative effect, I believe, is as Geertz suggests, that
people weave new social and cultural meanings integrating threads from their

past, their present, and their hopes for the future.

126

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131

APPENDIX I:

Statement for lnforrned Consent

What is the study about?

This study explores the relationship between cultural identity and career identity
of Mexican American college students majoring in business. The research
consists of individual personal interviews with approximately 20 students that
include questions about career choices and goals, family, college experiences,
and cultural communities. After the individual interviews have been conducted
and analyzed, small groups of students (ﬁve to six students) will be asked to
participate in focus group discussions about themes and issues which emerged
from the individual interviews. The intent of the research is to provide a forum
for college students to candidly share their thoughts and experiences relating to
career aspirations and cultural values so that educators might learn better ways
to support student success.

What is my role as a participant?

As a participant, you are the most important contributor to the study. Your time
and your candid responses are all that are necessary. Your decision to
participate in the study is completely up to you. You may choose not to
participate at all. You may choose not to participate in an interview or focus
group. You can refuse to answer any question you do not want to answer and,
you may decide to discontinue your participation at any time, for any reason.

How much of my time will participating in this study take?

As a participant in this study you may be asked to participate in an individual
interview (90 to 120 minutes) and/or a follow up focus group (90 to 120 minutes).
Your time for one or both of these activities will not exceed four hours.

What about the results of the study?

All results (interviews and focus groups) will be kept strictly conﬁdential and
participants will remain anonymous in any report of the research ﬁndings. A
copy of the ofﬁcial report of ﬁndings will be made available upon its completion.

What if I have any questions or concerns about the study?
If you have questions or concerns about the study, the researcher or anything
related to your participation you may contact either individual listed below:

Linda Gross Dr. Robert Rhoads

Researcher/Doctoral Candidate Faculty Supervisor

355-9510 x167 ofﬁce Department of Educational Administration
487-3427 home 355-5979

grossl@pilot.msu.edu rrhoads@pilot.msu.edu

132

APPENDIX II:
Consent form and demographic information sheet
Thank you for agreeing to be part of my dissertation study. I value your
willingness to participate and the time you are volunteering. Please let me know
if you have any questions or concerns about your participation. I look forward to
working with you.

Please complete the following Information form so we can begin!

 

 

INFORMED CONSENT
I have read the researchers statement regarding my voluntary role in the study. I agree to participate
voluntarily. I understand that I may choose not to participate in any portion of the study at any time.

Signature Date

 

Address

 

number and street city state zip

Phone E-mail

 

 

The following Information Is for demographlc purposes. It will be kept strictly conﬁdential.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A. Name 8. Age
C. Gender D. Ethnic background

E. Year in college F. Expected graduation date

6. Major(s) H. Cumulative grade point average

 

 

I. Where were you born?

 

J. Home State(s)

 

L. Languages spoken: Native or ﬁrst language

 

 

Other languages
K. Please attach a copy of your resume, if you have one.
Interviews
An interview time will be set up at your convenience. Weekend and evening times are available. What

day(s) and time(s) are most convenient for you to participate in an interview?

Please return this form In the enclosed, return addressed, stamped envelope or drop off to Linda
Gross In 419 Eppley Center.

133

APPENDIX III:

INTERVIEW PROTOCOL

I. REVIEW DEMOGRAPHIC INFORMATION SHEET
A. Verify the subject’s understanding of informed consent.
8. Verify information and check for thoroughness.
C. Ask subject to comment on or correct any blank or inaccurate items.

II. CULTURE AND FAMILY. Let’s start by talking about your background.

A. On your information sheet, you said your ethnic background was
What does it mean to be ?

 

B. What does cultural identity mean to you?
What cultural groups, if any, do you consider yourself part of?
Are there any groups associated with your ethnic background that you do not identify
with or don’t want to be part of? Why?

C. You indicated that you speak on your
information sheet. Probes:

rr bilingual: If not bilingual:

1a. In what contexts do you prefer to 2a. Are any of your family members
speak Spanish/English? bilingual?

1b. Which language do you speak more 2b. When/where do they speak Spanish
of on a day to day basis? At home? /English?
At college?

1c. What does it mean to you to be 2c. How important is it for a person to
bilingual? be bilingual in your community?

D. How many generations of your family have lived in the United States? Tell me about
your family.

Researcher worksheet:
Individual

 

134

E. How would you describe the community your family lives in?
What was it like growing up there?
What is it like now?
What does it mean to you to come from this community?

F. How would you describe your family’s ﬁnancial status when you were growing up?
Has it changed now?
What would you estimate your family’s income during the last few years?

G. What kinds of expectations do your parents and family have for you?
Were you always expected to go to college?
Were there certain careers they wanted you to pursue?

ASPIRATIONS

Let’s map out what your career interests have been.
What was the ﬁrst thing you ever remembered wanting to be? Why?
What other occupations were you interested in while you were growing up?
What interested you in them?
Why did you decide to pursue or not to pursue them?

What led you to decide on business?
What do you think it takes to become a success in the ﬁeld of business?

How do your friends and family feel about your decision to major in business?
Have they been supportive? How?

What does it mean to you to be a successful Latino/a in business?

What are your impressions of corporate America?
How would you describe the current business world?

Do you think there are barriers to Latino/a success in business or corporate America?
If yes, describe them.
Do you think these barriers will affect you in achieving your success? Why or why not?

COLLEGE EXPERIENCES

Tell me about your decision to go to college.

When did you ﬁrst consider college as an option?

What were you looking for in a college?

What/who inﬂuenced your decision?

What schools did you consider? Why ? How did you decide on Michigan State?

What expectations did/do you have for your college career?

135

How did you feel when you ﬁrst came to campus?
What have been the greatest challenges for you in college?
How do you handle these challenges?

What activities are you involved in? Which are most important to you?

Did you feel it was important to get involved with the Latino community on campus? Why
or why not?

MSU offers a variety of minority student support programs on campus?
Have you used any of these programs? Why or why not?
If yes, have they been helpful for you? How?

What kinds of support are most important to you in college?
What does it mean to you to be a successful Latino/a college student?

Do you think their are barriers to Latino/a student success in college? If yes, what are
they? Do you think these will affect you? If yes, how?

Have relationships changed with friends from home since you have been in college? If
how?

Let’s review your resume. Tell me about the kinds of work experiences you have had.
Did you ever encounter a barrier in a job you’ve held? If yes, how did you handle it?

Have you held a business related internship? If so, when & where?

How did you get the position?

Did it help you clarify your career goals in business? Why or why not?
What were the most signiﬁcant things you Ieamed during your internship?

What do you want to accomplish by the time you graduate?

What about 5 years from now? What are your most important long term goals?
PERSPECTIVES ON COMMUNITY AND THE WORLD

What are the most signiﬁcant issues currently facing the Latino community?

What does this mean to you? How do these issues affect you?

What is your role in dealing with or addressing these issues?

What business publications do you read to stay current on business issues?

Which publications are the most important to you? Why?
Have you ever read Hispanic Business?

136

What organizations can you see yourself being involved in once you are out in the
business world? (business professional societies/organizations, Hispanic Chamber of
Commerce, National Hispanic Business Association, civic organizations, company based
Latino groups, fratemitylsorority networks, alumni groups)

How important would being involved in a community or professional organization be to
you?

There are lots of issues concerning Latino communities in business. (NAFTA, emerging
markets and industrialization in Mexico, South and Central America)
Do you talk about any of these issues in classes? With family? Friends? Others?

Who are your business role models? What do they mean to you? Are there any Latinos
you regard as business role models?

137

APPENDIX IV:

Variable Relationships in the Interview Protocol

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

VARIABLE TO BE EXPLORED PROTOCOL QUESTION
Descriptive demographic Information lnfonnation sheet & I: A-C
(such as age, gender, ethnicity, year in school, major, nationality, etc.) II: D -F
Cultural Identlty lnforrnation sheet: D, L
ll: A-E
llI: E,G
IV: C -J
V: A-E
Career aspirations lnfonnation sheet: G
II: G
lll: A-C, E-G
IV: A-B, H -M
V: C, E
Family Inﬂuences ll: B-G
III: A, 0
IV: A,J
V: D, E
Peer associations 8. Influences II: B - C
III: A, 0
IV: A-G;J
V: A-E
I lnvolvementwithethnlc communities, Issues and organizations II: A-E
. III: E-G
‘ IV: D-l, K-L
V: A-E
College and work experiences II: G
V: A-L
Perceptions of barriers II: F
Ill: C-G
IV: C, l-J
V: A, D-E
Self efficac lll: A-G
IV: A-M
V: A-E

 

 

 

 

138

   

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