Belonging On Campus: Code-Switching and College Life

Students of color grapple with heightened burnout levels as they code-switch to navigate academic, professional, and social spaces where they are underrepresented. Consequently, this lowers student engagement on campus and academic performance, contributing to increased mental health challenges and substance abuse, leading students to consider transferring or dropping out of higher education due to concerns regarding belonging.  

In Belonging on Campus: Code-Switching and College Life, George Paasewe expands on his 2015 IRB research on code-switching, which contributed to the scientific literature by discovering how code-switching is learned while illuminating the complex challenges that students of color face in their pursuit of belonging and succeeding.