Growing Up In An Immigrant Middle Class Family

Apparently, children since a young age do not have the same starting line. Depending on the parents’ or grandparents’ wealth and socioeconomic status (SES), what we experience is highly distinguishable from each other. My interpretation of social world having grown up in a modest middle class family would be different than of kids from a high class family. As a matter of fact, it is difficult to see objectively how my capitals have worked to let me read my own social world this way. It is many times taken for granted, and the privileges are hard to be aware of until you go through the disadvantages or someone else pinpoints it out to you. My father, with parents from a farming background, certainly started from a disadvantaged point compared

It is because they have an enough-paid job as a teacher and an official at the office of education now, and the cultural message suggests that their achievement is enough to be considered a successful life. In like manner, possession of primary forms of capital – financial, human, cultural, and social—influences several aspects of life including employment, schooling, and family life. The capital classifies people within hierarchy and further dictates how to understand the social world, which again affects their accumulation of capital.

One of the arenas of life that matters for children’s access to capital is a family life as a certain structure of family is associated with higher accumulation of wealth and capital. To be honest, I took it for granted to have both parents in my life. In fact, I cannot deny that financial capital and cultural capital helped us to maintain the structure of my family. It was wealth and enough income that prevented our family from separating due to financial problems, whether by divorce or for a parent to leave for a better-paying job far from home. Furthermore, it was wealth coming from both parents and grandparents that put me in affluent

Classification of students happens within school based on family status, grades, race, etc. Tracking is the institutional tool that is used to intensify the stratification (Carter, p.72). I also remember I had tracked classes as early as the 7th grade, and the more you attended after school institutions, the higher the chance of being placed in ‘above average’ classes. However, we further need to take into account inter-school stratification. In my experience, I did not quite go through such extreme divisions within the school since students in my elementary and middle school—it was a private school— came from similar backgrounds and levels of wealth. It was not only about physical resources in which we had more than public school students that made many of us outstanding. There were more important factors that were expected by parents and teachers, and those expectations created cultural capital for the students. In my middle school, almost all of us never questioned going to college. With an access to this dominant cultural signal, our entry into high school was greatly guaranteed, especially to those excelling schools. Therefore, with financial capital, cultural capital and social capital all working together, I was accepted to a good high school and could interpret the aspiration for academic