Latinas at a Hispanic-Serving Institution: Resilient Resistance Affirming Race-Gender Expectancies for College Attainment

Many Latinas encounter negative expectations regarding their chances of attending college in the United States. Dominant narratives legitimize these structural and relational negations by depicting Latinas as a group that voluntarily lowers their expectations of themselves as they move through the education pipeline. To increase the representation of Latinas on college campuses, postsecondary institutions are financially incented to become Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs). Through the lens of resilient resistance, this qualitative study asks the following questions: (a) How do first-generation college-going Latinas define their educational expectations for postsecondary education? and (b) How do first-generation college-going Latinas enact their educational expectations through the practice of resilient resistance at a Hispanic-Serving Institution? Through the stories of four Latina undergraduates at a 4-year HSI in the American Southwest, this study contends that participants' refusal to accept other people's disbelief ignited their postsecondary education pursuits. As their own educational expectations were overrun by the expectational status quo, the participants utilized their cultural values of familismo to enact resilient resistance as they navigated in-between institutional spaces. This article calls upon universities to establish equitable conditions within Latinas' educational environments and to actively direct resources toward their ability to leverage human agency, build coalitions, and recenter their own expectations for college success.