In educational research, girls are frequently depicted as success stories, able to effortlessly navigate academic excellence as empowered females. However, these depictions lack nuance and often fail to capture the complexity of young women's experiences as they shift from compulsory schooling into higher education. Using a methodology of…

This paper studies intersectional multiplicity by encompassing the ways individuals shape relationships between social structures and their science identity. We discuss the science lives of two sixteen-year-old British South-Asian Muslim women studying in a single-sex independent school in London, both of whom aspire to science careers. Adapting…

This paper analyses the pedagogical pathways of a group of first-generation Iranian migrant doctors in the UK. It explores the complex system of class production and growing up as a classed subject in Iran, a process that ties young women's educational aspirations to female independence on the one hand and to the modern feminine, heterosexual…

This article concentrates on the transition from comprehensive school to the upper secondary level from the viewpoint of migrant background girls. Emphasis is on understanding the "bounded agency" and the ways in which gender and family background are expressed in the modalities of the agency. Previous studies show that ethnic minorities…

This article offers an alternative point of view on the perspectives that large-scale literacy surveys provide on refugee women by presenting the case of Darya, a young Afghan woman who moved to Canada as a refugee in 2009. It also presents how a community-based organisation for young people addressed Darya's literacy and identity curation…

The aim of this article is to study how young people view themselves as learners within educational trajectories, as an alternative approach to today's emphasis on performance and standardisation. We study different learner positionings in transitions from one level of schooling to another, using the analytic concepts of "positional…

Adolescent girls' and their mothers' expectations for their daughters' college attainment, mother-daughter communication about education, and daughters' early childbearing attitudes were examined in 146 U.S.-raised Latina girls (mean age = 14.4 years) and their mostly immigrant mothers. Through structural equation modeling, we…

This phenomenological study explored the impact of marital expectations and socio-economic status on post-secondary educational and professional goals of Northern California Asian Indian immigrant women both before and after marriage. For the purposes of this study, 15 Southeast Asian Indian immigrant women from the Sacramento metropolitan region…

Family literacy programs promote certain ideas about literacy and parenting. This study examined how Mexican immigrant women in a family literacy program used mainstream ideas, or discourses, of mothering and parent involvement in education to pursue their own personal and academic goals. The findings revealed that women were at times faced with…

This paper draws from four sets of four in-depth interviews and one subsequent focus group to examine how undocumented Mexicana students navigate identities and the meanings of race, gender, class, and legal status. We mobilize a critical race theory framework to center and explore the content of students' counterstories. While majoritarian…

Community colleges in the United States serve as social, cultural, and intellectual hubs that take the role as gatekeepers by committing to opening up the doors of opportunity to the public (Vaughan, 2006). Community colleges prepare their students for the workforce by providing credit or non-credit courses, certifications, or degrees. Depending…

Women immigrants are an increasing population in the U.S. and in the Adult Basic Education (ABE) system, particularly in English to Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) programmes. The authors argue that their numerical predominance and comprehensive needs are not factored into U.S. ABE policies by reformers who are anxious about the system being…

This article explores the experiences, perceptions, and aspirations of three marginalized female university students. Their admission was facilitated by an access program designed to support the participation of young people who, while meeting entrance requirements, would otherwise not be able to attend university because of their social and…