Fear of Deportation in High School: Implications for Breaking the Circle of Silence Surrounding Migration Status

Long-term ethnographic data on the daily lives of undocumented students, their teachers, and administrators reveal the effects of fear of deportation (De Genova,?2002) on the routine of a high school. Thirty years after Plyler v. Doe guaranteed the educational rights of undocumented students, this study finds many factors contributing to the creation of a Circle of Silence around these students’ rights and access to schooling that threatens the educational opportunities of a significant population of immigrant students. The implications of this study reveal how schools can become a space to interrupt this vicious cycle through awareness, counseling, and advocacy.     

Exploring the Meaning and Paths of Advocacy for Undocumented Students’ Access to Education

There is widespread national debate over how to address and advocate for undocumented immigrants in the United States. Education is key to the economic, occupational, and social mobility of young unauthorized immigrants, but policies and practices can hinder or open their access to education. Educators pursue a range of activities to support undocumented students in school. This article identifies the conceptualizations, strategies, and thought processes of educators who advocate for undocumented students. The results reveal that advocates’ backgrounds, resources, goals, identity, and the communities in which they advocate influence their perceptions and practices of advocacy.     

Lowering the Cost Barrier to Higher Education for Undocumented Students: A Promising University-level Intervention

Undocumented students, many of Hispanic origin, face among the strictest cost barriers to higher education in the United States. Lack of legal status excludes them from most state and all federal financial aid programs. Furthermore, most states require them to pay out-of-state tuition rates at publicly supported institutions. In a new direction, boards of trustees at universities in several states have bypassed the legislative process to lower the cost barrier. This policy article evaluates one such university-level innovation.     

Identifying individual- and family-level coping strategies as sources of resilience and thriving for undocumented youth of Mexican origin

Drawing from resilience theory, we explored the strategies that Mexican immigrant youth used to cope with stressors from being undocumented. On the basis of semi-structured interviews with 30 high school students who emigrated from Mexico to the United States, we identified several stressors from being undocumented, including having limited opportunities, fear of deportation, and exposure to negative reminders of their undocumented status. To manage such stressors, students utilized individual coping strategies (e.g. diversion, reframing, normalizing). In addition, the families of undocumented youth employed various coping strategies to help buffer their children against stressors from being undocumented (e.g. protecting the family unit, positive future, emotional support, limited communication). From our findings, we developed a preliminary model that describes the stress and coping of the undocumented youth in this study, which can extend past theorizing on resilience and thriving, as well as inform the design of community-based programs and policies for undocumented youth and their family.     

Echándole ganas: The academic identities of undocumented Latino youth

This ethnographic study explores what happens in the lives of two 1.5-generation undocumented Latino youth that results in academic engagement or disengagement. It examines how turning points, policy, language proficiency, school structure, economic needs, and family and personal circumstances affect academic identities. Findings reveal how students’ agency can make a big difference in explaining the high school graduation of youth who are proficient in English. Consequently, labeling students as low or high achievers disregards the fluidity of their academic identities as well as their capacity to change their academic trajectories within society’s structural limitations.     

Networks of Passing: Experiences of Undocumented Latin American Immigrants’ Identity Negotiation

Undocumented Latin American immigrants are one of the fastest-growing populations in the United States, and they are one of the most vulnerable. Due to constant fear of deportation, these immigrants have to communicatively “pass” for documented in a variety of situations, and they might be likely to use informal network ties (social capital) to do so. Through eight diverse focus group interviews of undocumented immigrants, this study explores how this population passes. Undocumented immigrants used talk, the body, or documents to pass either individually or through network members. Implications for both theory and practice are discussed.     

Proximity and policy: negotiating safe spaces between immigration policy and school practice

Policy around the legal status and social rights of the nation’s estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants is unresolved, making it imperative that PK-12 schools and educators prepare for challenges to undocumented students’ educational access. In 2008, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) appeared near an elementary school, which required school personnel to use the space in and around their school to demarcate boundaries to limit the impact of ICE activity on the school community. Critical moral geography is the guiding theoretical construct the authors use to examine the intersection of immigration policy and education in the context of immigration enforcement near a public school. Critical moral theory suggests that “places” are sites where people contest their values and concepts of what is morally correct, engaging in struggles over power. Thinking about space broadly allows for an exploration of how different policies converge and affect the spaces where educators are trying to engage in moral work. The authors conclude that educators can be instrumental in creating safe spaces for undocumented students.     

Preparing principals on the U.S.-Mexico border and beyond: A call to confront fear,uncertainty, and the marginalization of Mexican American Students

The recent presidential election and an increase in anti-immigrant rhetoric and deportations foster greater uncertainty and fear in Mexican American immigrant communities. In the border city of El Paso, Texas, teachers and principals report how fear and uncertainty negatively impact their campuses, students, and school-family relationships. The purpose of this article is to prompt a regional and national discussion about the preparation of principals who work in Mexican American and immigrant communities, because current professional standards and so-called “best-practices” in school leadership do not sufficiently address the critical social justice issues central to supporting students and families in the present and immediate future. To catalyze this dialogue, I offer five school leadership recommendations developed in collaboration with El Paso teachers and school leaders working in Mexican American immigrant communities. I hope scholars, educators, policymakers, parents, and activists will collectively consider these recommendations as well offer other viable solutions, strategies, practices, and approaches to preparing school leaders in these uncertain and unjust times.     

美国非法移民子女的教育政策研究——《

20世纪60年代以后,美国的移民政策开始宽松,非法移民的数量也随之增多,其子女的受教育问题自然成为社会关注的焦点。《民权法案》《普勒莱法案》保证了所有学生都可以接受平等的基础教育,而在高等教育问题上,非法移民学生的发展却遭遇了瓶颈。在此背景下,《梦想法案》2001年得以问世,到今天已经是第14个年头,但由于受到众多阻挠,该法案真正成为法律还有待时日,非法移民学生获得公平的高等教育权及其寻求合法权益之路仍然困难重重。     

Pedagogical Border Crossings: Testimonio y Reflexiones de una Mexicana Académica

I am an assistant professor at New Mexico State University; however, the path to getting to this position has been about crossing borders, about learning in and from the borderlands. The borderlands that my body has had to cross, physically and figuratively, have left many heridas abiertas (open wounds) but have also provided me with knowledge. The pain and struggles are constant reminders of the collisions that happen between el primer y tercer mundo and how these experiences leave open wounds. The inextricable relationship between Mexico and the US is deepened as Mexicanos like me are forced to come to El Norte, whether by choice or brought by parents. At almost 11 years old, my life changed—I crossed, with the help of a coyote, into Los Angeles, California. In the US, xenophobic spaces and actions have influenced and shaped my epistemologies and my awareness/conocimiento about navigating anti-immigrant spaces. This conocimiento was affirmed by and informs my teaching and research. This acute awareness, facultad (Anzaldúa, 1987), and use of these teaching tools are what I term pedagogical border crossings.