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This paper uses a sociological model to compare the residential energy consumption between immigrant students and native-born American students and to explain the difference by demographic characteristics, values, and specific attitudes. Further, it tries to explore whether the relationship between immigration status and residential energy consumption is mediated by value orientation towards frugality and specific attitudes towards energy conservation. The data of an online survey among native-born and foreign-born students at the University of Central Florida are used. The results suggest that immigrants consume less energy at home than native-born Americans, but the time stayed in the US doesn’t have an impact on the energy consumption of immigrants. In addition, the results do not show evidence that value orientation towards frugality and specific attitudes toward energy conservation mediate the relationship between immigration status and energy consumption at home.

Despite the challenges they face in K-12 schools, members of immigrant communities consistently express high educational aspirations, a commitment reflected in the rising numbers of immigrant and first-generation students enrolling in higher education throughout the United States. Though colleges and universities have worked to institute programs that better serve the needs of diversifying student cohorts, members of immigrant families continue to experience challenges once they reach college, including stress and social isolation, restrictions on their future employment, and the looming threat of deportation or family separation. This indicates that personal investment in education and nascent institutional reforms are not enough to mitigate the inequalities that shape educational access for historically excluded communities, raising questions about how immigrant families collectively navigate the challenges and opportunities of higher education. Drawing on 28 months of ethnographic research in the San Fernando Valley, a collection of suburbs north of Los Angeles, CA, this dissertation explores how students from mixed-status immigrant families navigate the transition from high school to postsecondary life. This multi- sited, longitudinal study utilizes in-person and virtual participant observation, semi-structured interviews, archival research, text analysis, and guided photo elicitation. In total, the study includes data collected from students, educators, and caregivers throughout southern California. Over the course of the dissertation, I explore how family dynamics, coupled with socio- political constraints, inform postsecondary trajectories. I further investigate how family dynamics shift in response to new institutional priorities, highlighting the informal advising networks that emerge among older and younger members of the “first-generation” student population. In re-conceptualizing higher education as a familial project, my dissertation makes three primary contributions. First, I show how the pursuit of postsecondary education responds to cultural narratives of sacrifice that provide students with a critical foothold when they face challenges in K-12 and college environments. Second, I unravel how the technocratic activities involved in applying to and matriculating in college require that students from immigrant families engage in strategic acts of disclosure that can exacerbate stress, anxiety, and feelings of non-belonging that persist throughout their time in higher education. Finally, I break apart the traditional notion of the “first-generation” student, showing how older and younger members of this population differentially experience the high-school-to-college transition and seek to pave the way for those that follow them.

The study examines the life and educational experiences of five Generation 1.5 students at California State University, San Bernardino and analyzes how the first cultural socialization affects later English academic language learning. The study used three methods of gathering data: a survey questionnaire, participant-observation, and one-on-one interviews. The study also reviews other case studies that describe life and educational experiences as well as the language and cultural connections of Generation 1.5 students. An analysis of lexical, structural and interactional differences of the spoken and written modes of the English language is also included. The study's findings indicate that learning the vocabulary of the written language was a key factor in being a member of the academic community.