Facets of family achievement guilt for low-income, Latinx and Asian first-generation students.

Objectives: For many low-income, Latinx and Asian first-generation students, family is a central motivator for obtaining a college degree. Yet, striving for upward mobility yields unanticipated psychological consequences. Specifically, family achievement guilt is a socioemotional experience related to "leaving family" to attend college. As a relatively understudied phenomenon, prior work has likely underrepresented the ways low-income, Latinx and Asian first-generation students experience guilt in the university. To address this gap, the current study aimed to refine the concept of family achievement guilt by exploring its different facets. Method: We utilized in-depth, semistructured interviews with 34 low-income, Latinx and Asian first-generation students. Results: Using both inductive and deductive analytic methods, we constructed four facets of guilt. Participants shared feeling guilt related to leaving family behind, having more privileges in the university context, becoming culturally different than family members, and experiencing financial distress. Conclusions: Unpacking family achievement guilt experiences of a fast-growing student population contributes to our understanding of theory and of possible support mechanisms. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

In the In-Between: Low-Income Latinx Students Sensemaking of Paradoxes of Independence and Interdependence.

Low-income, Latinx students navigate independent norms in U.S. educational systems and interdependent norms in their familial dynamics. Yet, their everyday interactions with important others (e.g., peers, parents, instructors) reveal more complexity in between these contexts, often communicating paradoxes of independence and interdependence. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 35 low-income, Latinx high school graduates before they entered college to examine how their daily interactions in home and school contexts facilitated dynamic and paradoxical engagement with interdependence and independence. Using constructivist grounded theory, we constructed five types of paradoxes. For example, strong practices of interdependence in their college-preparatory high school setting (e.g., extensive academic support) undermined students' desires to be independent. These contradictions reflect an in-between space, referred to as nepantla, where students give voice to and make sense of past, present, and future understandings of how to be a self.