"Education Was Always My Ticket to Something More": Disabled Transfer Students' Educational Journeys Across Contexts

Abstract: Scholarship on disability in higher education has unveiled the complications that students face in coming to terms with their disabilities and traversing college based on the ableist settings they inhabit. Nonetheless, the paths, priorities, and unique challenges depicted in the literature are often limited to one institutional setting. In this narrative inquiry study involving interviews with 14 pre- and post-transfer college students, we chronicle their journeys from high school to community college and, for some, to a post-transfer institution. In particular, we unveil how, over these three points in time, students engage in changes of how they reconcile their disabled identities and waver between independent and interdependent behaviors. Our findings call for further inquiry regarding the role of familial capital in informing students' resource attainment, as well as push practitioners to form more intentional partnerships to support disabled students' smoother transitions across educational institutions.