Unemployment Effects on College Enrollment: On the Role of Race/ethnicity, Parental Involvement, and Spatially Bound Resources in the Warehousing of American Youth

This dissertation is centered on further understanding the warehousing hypothesis. This is a phenomenon where college enrollment patterns across the U.S. are driven by labor market conditions. The interrelated nature of individual and structural level processes motivates the fundamental question driving my research: how do race and ethnicity, parental involvement, and spatial processes interplay with labor markets to shape college enrollment patterns across the U.S.? First, I seek to understand how racial and ethnic patterns of college enrollment are influenced by access to local labor markets. In particular, I focus on how the process of warehousing affects the Latino/a population. Second, I aim to examine the relationship between parental involvement and the labor market and understand how they shape college enrollment. Finally, seek to understand the role that spatial processes play in the warehousing hypothesis across the U.S.