Political activism serves as a protective factor to mitigate the negative effect of R/E discrimination on stress and depressive symptoms for Latinx students. For Black students, higher levels of political activism may exacerbate experiences of R/E microaggressions and relate to more stress and anxiety compared with Black students who are less politically involved. Findings point to the need for a deeper understanding of phenomenological variation in experiences of microaggressions among R/E minorities and how students leverage political activism as an adaptive coping strategy to mitigate race-related stress during college. (PsycINFO Database Record

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Prior research has established that undocumented immigrant experiences are dynamic, reflecting the complex web of immigration-related policies that create legal vulnerability. As such, undocumented college students' experiences must be situated in their current policy context. Drawing on descriptive analyses of a survey of 1,277 undocumented 4-year college students in California, we examine how undocumented students are faring in a relatively inclusive policy context. Results demonstrate the heterogeneity of undocumented student experiences and unpack the challenges they confront while also demonstrating the ways they thrive. We document how respondents are performing across a variety of academic, well-being, and civic and political engagement outcomes. We also show that undocumented students' perceptions of legal vulnerability are complex and varied, taking into account family-level legal vulnerability and individual protections. Further, students perceive campuses as fairly welcoming spaces, with some differences arising across the two university systems. Ultimately, we argue that undocumented college students' experiences merit more nuanced and contextualized analysis.

For emerging adults transitioning to college, normative social and contextual shifts present challenges that are largely a productive aspect of development. But not all students have the same experiences, nor do all students manage similar experiences in similar ways. Black and Latinx emerging adults transitioning to Historically White Institutions must adjust not only to college life but also to feeling different and, sometimes, isolated. There is a dearth of qualitative work examining how students of color make meaning of their racial-ethnic experiences on campus. Our article draws on a mixed-methods study of Black and Latinx emerging adults’ transition to college to investigate how high school racial-ethnic contexts shape students’ interpretations of experiences of difference on college campuses. There was substantial variation in how Black and Latinx students interpreted experiences of difference on campus and coped with their feelings of otherness, and this variation was predicted by racial-ethnic high school context.

Building on recent studies of “racialized illegality,” this paper examines the psychosocial development of migrant “illegality” in a sample of ethnically and racially diverse immigrant young people. In-depth interviews and fieldnotes were collected in Chicago with White, Asian and Pacific Islander, and Latina/o immigrants ( N = 43; 14–33 years of age; 15 male, 28 female) who were undocumented and/or grew up in families with at least one undocumented parent, and who were asked to reflect on these experiences. Drawing upon the cycles of deportability framework, we theorize the psychosocial development of migrant “illegality” as a dynamic process driven by repeated, cyclical experiences with status-related stressors that regularly prompt acute fears as well as carry long-term psychosocial effects. Examining these cycles within our respondents’ reflections, we find discernible differences in both the types of status-related stressors and contexts of support experienced by Latina/o and non-Latina/o respondents, pointing to different cycles of deportability that vary along racial-ethnic lines. We maintain that these findings reflect the racialized context of migrant “illegality” in the United States, which targets primarily Latina/o migrants, as well as points to the need for increased supports for undocumented immigrants in non-Latina/o immigrant communities.