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Classical explanations for the differential allocation of youths into the status hierarchy in society typically rely on empirical research on intergenerational mobility in the Wisconsin tradition. This work has demonstrated the close links between the influence of significant others, educational aspirations, and educational attainment (Sewell and Hauser 1980). Our view of status attainment reflects a network-analytic approach, shifting emphasis from the "role modeling" and "cheerleading" influences of significant others toward the inequitable transmission of tangible institutional resources and opportunities and toward the difficulties in forming relationships with institutional agents.
This perspective starts with an articulation of the social distribution of possibilities (Wellman 1983), a term referring to the unequal distribution of opportunities for entering different social and institutional contexts and for forming relationships with people who control valued institutional resources, such as career-related information, vital social services, and bureaucratic influence. Such relationships, or ties, have been identified as important influences in adult occupational mobility (see, for example, De Graaff and Flap 1988 Granovetter 1974, 1982; Lin 1990). For network analysts, the pattern that facilitates or restricts opportunities for the formation and maintenance of these social ties is loosely referred to as social structure, whether in regard to specific institutions, residential communities, or society in general.
In the study of school inequality, the analysis of social networks reveals how success within the educational system, for working-class and minority youths is dependent on the formation of genuinely supportive relationships with institutional agents. By institutional agents, we mean those individuals who have the capacity and commitment to transmit directly or to negotiate the transmission of institutional resources and opportunities (such as information about school programs, academic tutoring and mentoring, college admission, and assistance with career decision making). Although institutional agents can include adult family members, we are generally referring to such people as teachers and counselors, social service workers, clergy, community leaders, college-going youths in the community, and the like. School peers may also act as institutional agents--for example, when working-class youths obtain informational resources from their middle-class peers.
In this article, we explore the relation between the educational and occupational goals and expectations of Mexican-origin high school students, their academic performance, and their reported social ties with institutional agents. We also examine how language patterns, which reflect...