<p> One in every four students in the United States is Latin@, yet approximately half of Latin@ students fail to complete a high school diploma within four years. By 2020, Latin@s will comprise approximately 50% of the population of the United States, which will lead to the &ldquo;Latinization&rdquo; of K-12 schools. Despite being such a large part of the U.S. population, only 13% of Latin@s graduate college (Irizarry &amp; Donaldson, 2012). </p><p> In Oregon, the graduation rate for the 2015-2016 four-year cohort was 73.8%; for Latin@s, the graduation rate was 67.4% (Oregon Department of Education, 2017). In 2015-2016, the River County School District had a graduation rate of 70.8% for the overall four-year cohort, but only 59.4% of the Latin@ students within that four-year cohort. Oregon mirrors the United States in that Latin@s continue to make up a growing percentage of the overall population in Oregon. Every day that Oregon public schools struggle to provide a high school education with high expectations for Latin@ students is another day of jeopardizing the future of Oregon. </p><p> This qualitative action research aimed to explore the development of critical consciousness in Latin@ ninth grade students at a comprehensive high school through a CRT and LatCrit lens. This study intended to change ninth grade, first-generation, U.S. born high school students&rsquo; position in their own education process, to empower students to consider their own educational point of view, to analyze their own and their peers&rsquo; points of view, and to organize opportunities to share their point of view with teachers and school district leaders in order to advocate for their educational needs and rights and to liberate themselves from marginalizing experiences in high school. The intention of this critical action research is to empower students to identify and advocate for their own academic success.</p><p>

This study examines second-generation Latinos born in the U.S. after 1965 and their prospects of achieving traditional assimilation in the United States. Some social scientists argue that “classic” straight-line assimilation is a less likely path for Latino-Americans and that segmented or downward assimilation theory will characterize the trajectories of Latino-American youth in the 21st century. Other scholars argue that the path of “classic” straight-assimilation is still an empirically sound theory and that evidence suggests assimilation is taking place over time. Data collected on economic, social, cultural, and civic participation patterns among Hispanics identify key strides that are being accomplished among Latinos and their offspring. I revisit segmented assimilation theory to determine whether dissonant acculturalization is the most influential obstacle for Latino-Americans as they move from adolescence to young adults. I argue that second-generation Latinos are a young group and the studies that project a stagnant or downward path of assimilation are premature. They also create a stigma that negatively labels Latinos, who are a large part of America’s future. My analysis suggests that mobility is occurring for many second-generation Latinos and that this upward mobility will become more apparent over time, just as it did with the European immigrants that arrived in the early 20th century.

First generation college students face some unique challenges in the pursuit of higher education. Aside from academic stressors, there are stressors related to social and cultural transitions which may exacerbate pre-existing emotional or psychological distress. Research suggests that acculturation influences psychological well-being and development. The current study examined the relationships between acculturation, acculturative stress, socio-economic status, and symptoms of anxiety among first-generation college students of Hispanic origin. Participants (N = 125) included those who were first in their family to attend college and were primarily female, of traditional college age, and of Mexican heritage. All measures were self-report and were completed online. Overall, this study was inconclusive as most analyses were underpowered. The present study failed to support a relationship between style of acculturation and symptoms of anxiety, although, experiencing Anglo marginality was related to high levels of acculturative stress and anxiety. Finally, regression analysis revealed that acculturative stress, age, and Anglo marginalization were significant predictors of anxiety and accounted for 31% of variance in anxiety. Implications of the present study were discussed. Further study with adequate power is highly recommended.

Through the lens of the Hispanic Paradox, this thesis examines healthy and unhealthy life expectancy changes occurring from 1997 to 2015 among Hispanics, non-Hispanic blacks, and non-Hispanic whites in the United States. The goal is to determine how Hispanics –disaggregated by nativity status– fare relative to other racial-ethnic groups in regard to changes in the percentage of total life expectancy that is lived in a healthy state (i.e. compression and expansion of morbidity). Using the Sullivan method, multi-state life tables were created with functional limitation prevalence data from the National Health Interview Survey. Results indicate that most subpopulation groups experienced periods of both morbidity compression and expansion from 1997 to 2015, though patterns of change varied by race-ethnicity and gender. Partial support was found for the Hispanic paradox given that similar trends in the percentage of total life expectancy lived disabilityree existed between non-Hispanic whites and foreign-born Hispanics.

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This dissertation examines New York Puerto Ricans’ identifications as part of a Hispanic collectivity that saw itself as a permanent and integral sociocultural group of New York City between the years 1931 and 1951. It argues that a New York Latino identity emerged at this time across ethnic, racial and class lines through Spanish-speakers’ strategic appropriations of the era’s transnational frameworks, including proletarian fraternalism (chapter one), Pan-Americanism (chapter two), cosmopolitan aestheticism (chapter three) and anti-colonialism (chapter four). Whereas the coordinates of present-day Latino identities are generally traced back to the ‘invention’ of a Hispanic category in order to create voting or consumer blocs in the late twentieth century or, conversely, to the political and cultural ‘awakening’ of Hispanics during the countercultural decades of the sixties and seventies, this dissertation upsets these timelines by showing how a New York Latino identity materializes earlier than previously thought. Specifically, it explores how the sociopolitical conjuncture of the 1930s and 1940s, with the sweeping reforms of the New Deal, the unprecedented influence of socialist ideas on American culture, the antifascist fight and world war, and the consequent emergence of anti-colonial movements, provided a grammar for New York Puerto Ricans’ self-definitions as part of a pan-ethnic minority that was “here to stay” in New York. In so doing, this dissertation challenges depictions of early New York Puerto Rican communities as isolated or self-contained spaces, and inquires into the ways localized ethnic identities are modulated by national and international events. Reading works by New York Puerto Rican authors like Jesús Colón, Pedro Labarthe, Pedro Caballero, and Guillermo Cotto-Thorner, and drawing from historical documents and New York Spanish-language periodicals such as Artes y Letras, La Voz, Eco Antillano, Pueblos Hispanos and Liberación, this dissertation weaves sociocultural analysis, literary criticism and archival research to begin to redress the relative lack of scholarly attention given to the cultural productions of New York Hispanic communities prior to midcentury and thus provides historical moorings for the cultural expressions of Latino New York.