DREAMers and values: An urban and suburban community college comparison.

Abstract

Although previous research on the role of postsecondary education in the lives of undocumented youth has offered insight regarding demographics, educational achievement, measures of well-being, and generational trajectories, less is known about these young immigrants' values and beliefs regarding themselves, their relation to others, their futures, and the potential influence of their social surroundings on these values. The intersecting perceptual beliefs between self and higher education were investigated among 7 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) participants in 2 U.S. community colleges and were hypothesized to reflect two social environments: an urban (New York) and a suburban (New Jersey) setting. As values analysis uncovers principles and goals embedded within narratives, the similarity (shared beliefs) and dissimilarity (unshared beliefs) of being undocumented in these two landscapes were investigated through values. Results revealed that regardless of location, undocumented students held values concerning perseverance and the need to hide their status yet be understood by others. However, depending on location, values either reflected the importance of improving either one's family condition (New York) or one's personal trajectory (New Jersey). Implications are discussed in the context of current U.S. immigration policy and what college administrators and faculty can implement in order to create a more welcoming climate for this vulnerable, yet growing, student population.

Description and Pilot Evaluation of a Dreamer Ally Training for Higher Education Staff and Faculty

“…Many college and university campuses are engaged in actions to attract, support, and retain undocumented college students. College-based initiatives are key to the immediate and longer-term academic success and wellbeing of undocumented students (Caicedo, 2019;Gonzales, 2016). To succeed, these efforts must attend to the many contextual constraints such students encounter, including high rates of unfair or negative treatment by faculty and staff .…”

“I Thought About Solutions”: How Students’ Narratives of Relational Conflict, Grit, and Agency Predict Academic Performance within Community College

“…This study's methodology and findings extend several bodies of past research and suggests new avenues for research on community college students. Its narrative results echo the work of researchers such as Caicedo (2019), Gupton (2017), andVanOra (2019), all of whom explored how students perceived community colleges as entities that could offer both support and obstacles toward students' aspirations. This study also utilized mixed method paradigms pioneered by scholars such as Daiute (2014), Jović (2020), Kreniske (2017), and Todorova (2018 to reveal that students' narratives can predict their academic performance.…”

“…There is also a rich body of narrative research that finds that when community college students reflect on their college experiences, they often report that college partners facilitate academic success by offering students emotional, informational, and instrumental support (Bukoski & Hatch, 2016;Daiute & Kreniske, 2016;Urias et al, 2016). Similar narrative studies also demonstrate that community college students can connect their college activities and outcomes to internal motivations, beliefs, desires, and coping strategies that connect to or resemble their sense of aspiration, mindset, grit, and agency (Bukoski & Hatch, 2016;Caicedo, 2019;Daiute & Kreniske, 2016;Gupton, 2017;VanOra, 2019). Thus, the framework of narrative inquiry offers another way of validating Deil-Amen's (2011) and Wang's (2017) theories.…”

“…To further explore how community college students’ interactions with college partners and internal sense of aspiration, mindset, grit, and agency connect to their academic outcomes, researchers can draw on narrative methodology. Past narrative research has explored how community college students create narratives—stories that help people understand, investigate, and communicate about their experiences across a variety of contexts (Daiute, 2014)—to make sense of higher education and their lives within it (Ahmed, 2021; Bukoski & Hatch, 2016; Caicedo, 2019; Gupton, 2017; Urias et al, 2016; VanOra, 2019). These researchers discovered that community college students often connect their academic lives and outcomes to the support networks that they built with college partners, as well as to powerful internal motivations, beliefs, desires, and coping strategies.…”

Examining the Undocumented College Student Policy Implementation Environment Through a Contextual Interaction Theory Lens

“…We analyzed interview data from 45 higher education institutional agents from eight community colleges across four states to investigate the role contextual factors, actor characteristics, and social interaction processes had in their work as policy implementers. The examination of community colleges is especially important because research indicates the majority of undocumented students enroll at community colleges (Caicedo, 2019; Teranishi et al, 2011). Prior research exploring institutional agents’ implementation of policies has focused on actor-level perspectives with limited attention to contextual influences and social interactions among policy actors.…”