Abstract

“Becoming the Heroes, the City Deserves”: A Multimethod Approach to Understanding Latino Men's College Friendships

Ruby Arabella Hernandez

There is currently a paucity of research regarding Latino men’s friendships. This dissertation relies on the friendship literature to analyze Latino men’s friendships in the college context. Using a multimethod approach, three studies are presented, (1) How are Latino men defining their engagement with others in their friendships? (2) Does the racial/ethnic composition of their college friends influence their consciousness around feminist attitudes (3) What role does a Latino men’s college organization, and the friendships created within, play in their success?

This dissertation draws from two separate studies. The first study is from “The Success in Higher Education” survey data collected across two UC campuses. The survey encompasses demographics, educational and parental background, home socialization, gender attitudes, encounters with the law, loneliness and friendship characteristics. The first two study chapters use data subsets from this larger study for analysis. The first study chapter analyzes responses of 52 college-going Latino men and the open-ended question, “How do you define a friend?” and measures their levels of loneliness. Latino men in college experienced low amounts of loneliness and define their friendships in caring and vulnerable terms. The second subset uses regression analysis on 102 Latino men’s responses, analyzing their current close ethnic/racial group composition, critical engagement with their male friends, and how they predict feminist attitudes. Having more Latino and diverse close friend group lead to a weak prediction of higher feminist attitude endorsement.

The second study, The Hermanos Study, is an ethnographic study of a Latino men’s college organization and ten qualitative interviews with members in the organization conducted at the University of California, Santa Cruz. A subset of the data was used, I selected two participants who were interviewed as a group to use as a case study. Members of the organization seek familiarity and refuge within the space and friendships to create familial connections in college.

The concluding chapter reviews the findings and implications for Latino men’s friendship definitions, their friends’ influence on feminist attitudes, and the friendship benefits of joining a Latino men’s organization. Future directions for studying Latino men’s friendships are discussed based on the studies reviewed.