The Mobility Puzzle and Irreconcilable Choices

I met Angie in the summer of 2010, when she was an eighteen-year-old high school student. A Latina, she lived in Port City Heights, a housing project located on the outskirts of Port City. Port City, a small northeastern town, has one of the highest poverty rates and lowest four-year high school graduation rates in the United States. Angie's paternal grandparents had brought her as a six-month-old from Puerto Rico to Port City. She said her grandparents took her because they thought they would be able to offer her a better life than her parents could. This happened after her parents split and her mother starting dating a man who was caught up in alcohol. Angie still lived with her grandparents when I met her. Her mother now lived in Philadelphia with Angie's five sisters. Angie's father moved in and out of her grandparents' home. Some nights he came home drunk. One night, as Angie and I sat on her old but comfortable loveseat, enjoying some chicken nuggets, her father banged on the door. Angie looked at me: "This fuckin' fat-ass nigga is scratching my door like he a fuckin' ghost! What alcohol does to people!" Sometimes when her father was drinking, he ate all the food she had made for herself and stole the money she had hidden at the bottom of one of her clothes drawers. Despite the conflicts within her family, it was a place of comfort and support for Angie.

Angie remained focused on her future. She had worked two jobs since she turned fourteen, and although she liked to spend some of her money on nail art, tattoos, and trips to Philadelphia, she saved for college, a car, and emergencies. She planned to get a college degree, find a good job, start a family, and live the middle-class American dream.

A self-described "short and thick" woman, Angie liked to dress well at all times, in colorful blouses and tights, though she did not own many clothes or accessories. Some blouses were torn hand-me-downs with missing buttons or small holes that she would keep closed with safety pins. She always ironed what she wore. Angie also styled her hair differently every day and made sure her nails always shone with artistic polish designs. Like many young people her age, Angie liked to go to parties and dress up, but claimed that it was not to attract boys.

Becoming pregnant was out of the question. Even having sex, especially with the "wrong" boys, Angie said, was dangerous. She had heard from her teachers and employers, her church, and the nonprofit organization that helped with college admission that becoming pregnant or a "gangbanger" was a sure ticket to poverty and that people "like her" were "at risk" of the same. Angie said: "Niggas in Port City only want to talk and think about their baby daddies. That's how they like it. I have my dream man, but he ain't gonna be from this ghetto-ass place." Angie felt that she was different from her peers and on her way to becoming upwardly mobile since she was not a parent or a gang member.

Angie earned average grades in high school and her plan always included higher education. She had heard over and over that she would need a college degree to move beyond the struggles her family faced. But her aspirations were irreconcilable with the reality of her unpreparedness. Still, she remained hopeful, stating, "I don't have the grades for UConn [University of Connecticut] for now, but I'm gonna start at the community college. ... I don't gotta take the SAT [Scholastic Aptitude Test], I can take the placement test and later transfer."

After she graduated from high school in 2011, Angie packed her bags and used her savings to move to Florida. Once there she was going to attend Miami Dade College and live with her aunt and two cousins. Her aunt offered her a job at the food truck she owned to help her niece pursue her dreams. Angie explained to me that the food truck was very popular in Florida because restaurants were crowded and expensive. During the cold, snowy northeastern winter, Angie would imagine a busy, warm day working on her aunt's food truck under the tropical sun. It made her giddy with anticipation.

She was unhappy about leaving her family and friends, but she wanted to be far away from her father's alcohol and drug binges and felt that her best chances for a better life lay outside of Port City. She reasoned: "You gotta work for success and it's hard, people don't wanna get outta here. Like, nigga get outta here."

I stayed over at Angie's house the night before she left for Florida. We awoke at the crack of dawn. I was sleepy after staying up until three a.m. and chatting. But Angie implored: "No, we gonna miss the flight! Get up! Get your ass ready!" We picked up coffee at McDonald's on our way to the airport, which is approximately an hour's drive from Angie's home. "I'm leaving for college!" Angie shouted to the server as he handed us our coffee through the window. So that warm summer morning I drove Angie to the airport and she was on her way to Florida.

* * *

Two weeks later, Angie called me from Florida the day she filled out her Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). She was ecstatic. However, only a few days later, Angie told me her aunt could not deliver on her promise to hire her. According to both her and her aunt, Angie then applied for over ten other jobs, but no one contacted her. A few weeks later, she called me and announced that she had reached the end of her patience and could not continue to listen to her aunt and cousins "talk about [Angie] being lazy." Not long after this phone call, Angie unhappily decided to return to Port City. The defeat and fatigue Angie felt for not making it in Florida did not last long. Soon after she returned home, Angie was surrounded with family, friends, barbeques, and the beauty of the northeastern fall. Life fell back into place. I also regularly visited Angie again, just like the old days-or, as she put it, "before the taste of Florida."

Soon after, Angie and I visited Port City Rivers Community College, and she enrolled in classes and continued to pursue her dream of a college degree. But she had already missed a few weeks of classes, and she often heard about job opportunities from friends who worked at the mall, local bakeries, and hair salons. The work hours in these prospective jobs conflicted with Angie's class times. Angie decided to withdraw for the semester and take on three jobs. She claimed it was an easy decision because she had already missed a few weeks of the semester, was recovering from moving back home, and, most importantly, needed to focus on work to make up for all the money she had spent trying to attend college in Florida. That semester flew by quickly for Angie between her three jobs, what she called "friendship dramas," and family gatherings.

The following semester, Angie seemed to be on top of her life. She reenrolled at the community...