Evolving Digital Inequalities in the U.S: Working-class Latino Immigrant Families and Networked Computers at Home

The sociocultural activities of immigrant parents have always been an essential part of the American experience. As a country made up of newcomers, the United States has been historically transformed by the incorporation of foreigners and their children. Because this process happens at a large scale, the U.S. population has increasingly become more ethnically and racially diverse. At the dawn of the 21st century, the Latino/Hispanic pan-ethnic group, which includes immigrants from Mexico and other Latin-American countries, reached 53 million in 2012, six times its size in 1970, becoming the largest minority in the country. Within this group, Mexican immigrants and their descendants make up the majority at 64.6%.

In the past five years, I have had the opportunity to study working class Latino/Hispanic youth and families living in the U.S. southwest. Particularly, I have conducted ethnographic fieldwork in the Austin metropolitan area, one of the fastest growing cities in the country, and the capital of the state of Texas. I have interviewed first and second generation Latino/Hispanic children and parents, I have observed some of the sociocultural contexts in which they interact (e.g. school, after-school, and the internet), and I have studied their new media practices. In this post, I’ll briefly discuss some of the digital imaginaries that some working class immigrant parents with Mexican origins are developing, and how these are shaped by their occupations and educational attainment. I draw on the data from my doctoral dissertation and the Connected Learning Research Network’s Digital Edge project.

Working class Mexican immigrants adopting digital technology

For a variety of social, political, historical, and economic reasons, many of the Mexican immigrants come to the U.S. to work in menial jobs. A recent study of the Migration Policy Institute, for instance, revealed that Mexican immigrants are overwhelmingly represented in jobs that are low-skilled, including construction, transportation, maintenance, and service occupations. Given the U.S. demand for menial labor, immigrants with low educational attainment try to settle in and rapidly adapt to the host country working class. However, the process of incorporation is challenging and many of these immigrants struggle to complete it while confronting the structural inequalities of contemporary United States. As they cope with a new culture, language, and society, labor immigrants with Mexican origins develop unique parenting styles according to the resources (e.g. human, cultural, and social capital) they have brought and the ones they can mobilize in the U.S.

For Mexican and other Latino/Hispanic immigrant parents, digital media in particular have become an important asset they can provide to their children, not only at home, but also via mobile devices. A quantitative study conducted by the Pew Hispanic Center in 2013 revealed that, although disparities remain according to income levels and knowledge of the English language, more foreign born Latino/Hispanics adults are going online and adopting digital technology, especially cellphones. Using a sample of five working class Mexican immigrant families, in my dissertation research I found that some Latino/Hispanic parents invest in a variety of media technologies such as computers, television sets, hi-fi stereos, smart phones, videogame consoles, and Internet connectivity. Although the quality and quantity of their material access remains usually low, these families have started to connect to the networked communication environment. As a result of increasing connectivity at home, working class Latino/Hispanic parents are developing particular imaginaries about digital media technology that shape their family dynamics and media practices.

Imagining the home computer as a tool for homework

According to my dissertation findings, working class Mexican immigrant parents imagine digital media as tools that can help their children adapt to the U.S. culture, language, and educational system. Despite their few economic assets, low academic attainment, and little knowledge about digital technologies, these parents understand that the home computer and the Internet are essential school resources for their children. Explaining his reasons for buying a desktop computer, Mr. Flores, an immigrant from Mexico City who works as a cook in two restaurants and is the father of four children, said:

“We bought it for our sons, so that they could learn how to use it and do their homework, for school stuff mostly, it’s easier.”

Similarly, Mr. Chapa, an immigrant from a rural area in San Luis Potosi who works as a construction worker and is the father of three teenagers, explained to me that he purchased a computer because his children needed one for school:

“It was a need, and we had to buy it. (…) we didn’t buy one until we needed it. When [our] children said they needed a computer for their homework.”

Imagining the computer as a tool for doing school homework motivates Latino/Hispanic working class immigrant parents to purchase computers and get Internet access at home. Such belief has been shaped, on the one hand, by the public discourse about the urgency of closing the digital divide. On the other hand, such imaginaries have also been influenced by immigrant children, who, by interacting with computers and socializing with peers at the public school context, realize very early in their life that they can use this technology for a variety of practices including school tasks, communicating with friends, watching music videos, and playing videogames.  As children become aware of some of the affordances of personal computers and the Internet, they actively ask their parents to provide access to these technologies at home.

Access to Social Support and Expanding Digital Imaginaries

Although more minority households are connected to the Internet and equipped with networked computers in the United States, gaps in other dimensions of access remain and have become more visible. Disparities in skills, social support, and in the outcomes of technology use, for instance, add more layers of complexity to the evolving digital inequalities. Because of the lack of experience that many working class Latino/Hispanic immigrant parents have with new media technologies —they rarely use them in their jobs—, as well as their low educational attainment —some have only completed middle school—, they tend to have a limited understanding of the affordances of digital media and are not fully engaged in their use. As a result their digital literacy is usually underdeveloped, and lower than the one of their children.

The working class Mexican immigrant parents I have met often could not provide that much social support to the computer mediated practices of their children at home. It is common that these parents experience family role-reversal when using new media, and that their children are the ones who help them interact with technology. Moreover, the limited imaginaries about digital media that these immigrant parents have, especially about computers and the Internet, shape the parenting styles they develop and their family dynamics. While some parents decide to have a parenting style that restricts the use of the computer only for school purposes, others choose to have a hands-off approach and to leave their children on their own. In both cases, such imaginaries limit the kind of social support parents could offer, and their engagement in joint media practices with their children.

When working class Latino/Hispanic parents restrict the use of the networked computer to only homework activities, they can create barriers to youth participation in mediated practices that are more playful, social, and media production oriented, as well as obstacles to communal media practices among family members. Ms. Flores, a Mexican immigrant mother who stayed at home taking care of her four children and doing housekeeping tasks, for example, created rules that limited the amount of time that her older sons could use the computer (two hours a day) and the kind of endeavors they could pursue during this period of time. According to her, activities related to school needed to be always prioritized over others. She said:

“First they do their homework and everything needed for school and then if they have any time left they can do whatever they want.  (…) If they have to search for information it’s fine but when it’s just playing I don’t like it.”

However, there are possibilities to engage working class Latino/Hispanic immigrant parents in new media practices and help them acquire higher levels of digital literacy. They are already gaining access to the material technology in their homes and are developing imaginaries about digital media that, although are initially limited, have the potential to expand and diversify. Some of the Mexican immigrant fathers and mothers I have met usually express their interest in having more experiences with computers, gaining digital skills, and participating in joint media practices with their children. Although they often do not have the knowledge and time to engage in new media, they could develop their digital literacy by participating in community and adult education programs that are meaningful to them. Seeking information about labor rights, learning the English language, and communicating with relatives that live in their home country, for instance, are activities where Latino/Hispanic immigrant parents can practice digital skills. Hence, there is an opportunity for community organizations, schools, employers, and other institutions, to help engage minority parents from less advantageous socioeconomic backgrounds in the use of computers and the Internet. In this way, working class Latino/Hispanic parents would be able to provide more support to their children at home, and help to close other dimensions related to digital inequalities such as access to mentorship and guidance.

* Names of the parents have been changed to protect the identity of individuals.

* A version of this entry was published on LSE’s Parenting for a Digital Future.