Indigenous youth in the Monterrey Metropolitan Area. Risk factors for their university careers.

This investigation’s objective is to understand the risk factors that play a role in the formation and consolidation of college-level educational trajectories of indigenous youth. Via a qualitative approach based on the biographical method and in-depth interviews, we reconstructed the life courses of 10 indigenous young adults who study, completed or had been dropped out their university careers at conventional universities in the Monterrey Metropolitan Area. We find that the lack of cultural, economic, and emotional capital generates risk factors during pre-University education. These factors are strengthened or minimized by the characteristics of the family environment and the pre-University educational trajectories. Therefore, once enrolled in university, indigenous students have differing types of conditioning that either hinder or facilitate their university trajectories. We conclude that, the risk factors that threaten university educational trajectories are the low volume of emotional, cultural, and economic capital. In addition, the lack of social capital difficult that youth people create the support networks that make it possible to reduce the threats associated with the three types of capital. Therefore, it becomes a key risk factor that increases the chances of abandonment of school.