First-Generation Mexican-American & Latine Students Creating Belonging in Predominantly White Institutions

This literature review highlights how first-generation Mexican-American and Latine students find and create belonging as well as remake their home at predominantly white institutions (PWIs). Although Mexican-American students face systemic barriers and marginalization, they create belonging at a micro level within ethnic-based student organizations, academic families, relying on family back home, and serving others. Focusing on community cultural wealth and pedagogies of the home, the synthesis and analysis of belonging steers away from a deficit-based model and rather emphasizes how first-generation Mexican-American and Latine students resist the dominant white culture at PWIs. Using intersectionality to analyze recent research, allows for students to be seen in complexities and dig deeper in the ways they build and navigate community on campus