Dr. Sophia Rodriguez

This presentation provides ethnographic evidence of how undocumented immigrants navigate racialization processes. The research occurs in a focal state in the New Latino South, a hostile context toward immigrants broadly and undocumented immigrants specifically, and one that has a long history of complex race relations. I situate this research in Saenz & Douglas’ (2015) call for the racialization of immigration, considering notions of race and racism in the study of undocumented and minoritized youths’ experiences of identity, discrimination, social isolation, and belonging. Drawing on data from a three-year multi-site ethnography in two Title I urban public high schools in South Carolina, the study shows how youth are racialized in their schools and communities. The data reveal how the youth talk about such policy constraints that impact their access to educational opportunity and social mobility (Rodriguez, 2018; Rodriguez & Monreal, 2017), the variation in school support they receive, and how this impacts their sense of belonging to school. Youth narratives provide moments when youth elaborate their experiences in schools, which I argue is an act of resistance where they broker, dismantle, and overcome their position of marginality and cultivate racial solidarity and “cross-borders” within/beyond community-school spaces. This cultural elaboration of their everyday experiences positions them as active agents and humanizes their experience of racism and racialization in order to make visible the systemic oppression they encounter. Youth powerfully critique immigration policy and schools’ roles in perpetuating deficit-discourses about them. Implications for urban educators and school-based personnel are also discussed. I argue that it is imperative that educators and policymakers understand the conditions that undocumented youth navigate in order to advocate for their educational rights and social supports.

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