Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Addressing Exclusion In Organizations: Social Desire Paths And Undocumented Students Attending College, Laura Nichols

Sociology

With data from a national study of a network of 28 private, non-profit colleges in the United States, I show how the individual actions of high school and college staff became collective “social desire paths” to introduce new organizational practices to enroll students who were undocumented. In interviews with staff, four factors emerged as important in enrolling students: (1) the way social desire paths started as ad hoc processes and then were entrenched through the collective and similar responses of staff; (2) identification of financial, administrative, structural, and cultural barriers to inclusion that formed the basis for the development of …