Filipino American college student identities: exploring racial formation on campus

This study explores the multitude of academic and non-academic factors that converge within the college environment to create racial and ethnic identities that are unique to individual campus communities and their surrounding geographic regions. Through the narratives of Filipino American college students in California and Illinois, I examine the ways that the Filipino American identities are uniquely understood in relation to both the Asian American student population (whom Filipino Americans are presumed to be similar to), and the entire student population of all racial and ethnic backgrounds. This research focuses not only on how these identities are understood in the abstract, but also how students share, perform, and reproduce what it means to be Filipino American as part of student organizations whose active mission is to promote Filipino American culture on campus. Utilizing these complementary perspectives of how race and ethnicity are both theorized and acted upon, I will argue that institutions of higher education are instrumental regions where racial and ethnic ideologies are actively forged and contested, rather than being passively inherited from the non-academic world. Therefore, because of the transient nature and globalizing landscape of American higher education, the racial and ethnic schemas that are circulated within campus communities have far-reaching implications for how race and ethnicity are understood on a larger scale as the United States continues to diversify along multiple axes of difference.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Educational Policy Studies

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2017

Author dc:creator

• Hernandez, Xavier J

Contributors dc:contributor

• Pak, Yoon K.
• Brown, Ruth N.
• Baber, Lorenzo D.
• Kwon, Soo Ah

• Race
• Higher education
• Student organizations
• Diversity
• Filipino American

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2017 Xavier J. Hernandez

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/97277

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/97277