Educational Hopes, Documented Dreams: Guatemalan and Salvadoran Immigrants' Legality and Educational Prospects

Abstract

This article focuses on the effects of an ambivalent legal status on Salvadoran and Guatemalan immigrants' experiences with the U.S. educational system, focusing on how liminal legality shapes access to educational opportunities and immigrants' perceptions of these opportunities. Drawing on the segmented assimilation framework and on thirty-four in-depth interviews conducted with Guatemalan and Salvadoran immigrants in Phoenix, Arizona, the author argues that an ambiguous legal status molds views and perceptions of educational prospects and, as such, is central in determining immigrants' place in the educational system. While waiting for their statuses to become regular, they dream of higher education—dreams that are for the most part unattainable. Their legality, while not the only determining factor, does exacerbate and facilitate other conditioning circumstances, such as financial difficulties, family separations, and so on, that also impinge on their educational prospects. This case highlights the importance of immigration policies in shaping assimilation in critical ways.

Legality, Racialization, and Immigrants’ Experience of Ethnoracial Harassment in Russia

“…Specifically, legal status impacts immigrants’ position and wages in the labor market (Gleeson 2010; Massey and Gelatt 2010; Massey, Durand and Malone 2002; Takei, Saenz and Li 2009), and their access to social services (Fujiwara 2008; Hagan et al 2003), health care (Castañeda 2009; Viladich 2012; Willen 2012), housing (McConnell 2013; van Meeteren 2010), and education (Gonzales 2011; Menjívar 2008; Söhn 2014). …”

Sowing the Semillas of Critical Multicultural Citizenship for Latina/o Undocumented Youth: Spaces in School and out of School

“…These include sociolegal forces that affect their inclusion or expulsion from the country (Dingeman-Cerda & Rumbaut, 2015). Abrego (2006) and Menjívar (2006a;2006b) indicate that the sociolegal contexts linking immigration laws and policies to access to education contribute to liminal spaces inhabited by undocumented immigrants that render them neither legal nor "illegal." This liminal legality can extend for indefinite periods of time (Menjívar, 2006b).…”

Foiled Aspirations: The Influence of Unauthorized Status on the Educational Expectations of Latino Immigrant Youth

“…Second, with one recent exception (Greenman and Hall 2013), studies evaluating the influence of authorization status on education have focused on immigrant populations living in California or other states in the U.S. southwest with a history of immigration from Mexico and Central America (Abrego 2006; Bean et al 2011; Gonzales 2011; Menjivar 2008). This study focuses on a population that is not well represented in national datasets or in previous research with unauthorized immigrants, immigrant youth in the U.S. Southeast.…”