Work Primacy and the Social Incorporation of Unaccompanied, Undocumented Latinx Youth in the United States

Abstract

This study investigates the social incorporation of unaccompanied, undocumented Latinx youth workers as they come of age in the United States. Based on research with undocumented Central American and Mexican young adults who grew up as unaccompanied minors in Los Angeles, California, the data reveal that the pressures of financial obligations to families in the sending country and their own sobrevivencia (survival) in the United States, along with limited financial and social resource and mobility, produce a social incorporation trajectory shaped by the primacy of work. Work primacy conditions youth’s educational opportunities, community embeddedness, and family relationships and limits unaccompanied, undocumented youth’s ability to establish and maintain social networks with consequences for their social incorporation. The precarious occupations within the secondary labor market that are characterized by long hours, low wages, labor market restrictions, and unsafe and unsanitary work conditions limit opportunities for socioeconomic mobility for all youth. Women and Indigenous youth are distinctly affected by work primacy. This research advances our understanding of immigrant youth’s lives by examining how institutional context, familial obligations across borders, and limited ethnic networks play a role in shaping the incorporation experiences of unaccompanied, undocumented Latinx immigrants as they come of age in the United States.

Educational Meaning Making and Language Learning: Understanding the Educational Incorporation of Unaccompanied, Undocumented Latinx Youth Workers in the United States

“…Many of today’s Latinx newcomers come of age in diverse household dynamics (Landale et al 2011) with precarious class and legal statuses (Massey, Durand, and Pren 2016) and complex educational and employment trajectories (Oropesa and Landale 2009). Indeed, the unprecedented rise of unaccompanied youth migration to the United States over the past decade has prompted researchers to investigate the diversification of transnational immigrant households, with children migrating to support left-behind adult parents and siblings (Canizales 2018; Heidbrink 2014, 2020); the tensions that emerge between school and work for migrant youth (Canizales n.d.; Diaz-Strong 2020; Martinez 2019); and youth’s own imagined futures in their transitions into adulthood (Canizales and O’Connor forthcoming). Existing findings point to undocumented youth workers’ tendencies to be absent from school upon arriving in the United States and possibilities for stagnant or downward incorporation, but we know very little about their school-going experiences and processes of educational meaning making during their transitions into adulthood.…”

“…H. Lee 2019; Zhou 1998). Having worked in their home countries, Latinx immigrant youth workers enter the United States not only to assume their social roles as workers but also to act as financial providers for their left-behind families (Canizales 2015, n.d.; Martinez 2019). Here, I examine undocumented youth workers’ interactions with and perceptions of the institution of education, which are particularly influential in determining immigrant youth’s incorporation outcomes.…”

“…These kinds of considerations are significant for undocumented young adults, like Matias, who arrived in the United States from Central America and Mexico without their parents and grew up as workers—a population I refer to as “unaccompanied, undocumented Latinx youth workers.” Instead of attending K–12 schools, unaccompanied, undocumented youth workers have to work full-time to support both themselves in Los Angeles and their left-behind families in Central America and Mexico. These responsibilities relegated them to low-wage work during their transition into young adulthood (Canizales n.d.).…”

“…These studies situate undocumented immigrant youth’s incorporation within normative households, institutions, and imagined futures (Canizales and O’Connor forthcoming). This assumption has been critiqued in recent research that points to the diversity of immigrant youth’s family dynamics (Landale, Thomas, and Van Hook 2011) along with the relative inaccessibility of K–12 education (Canizales 2018; Diaz-Strong 2020, 2021) and the turn to work for unaccompanied youth (Canizales n.d.; Martinez 2019). Researchers have examined how education and language learning can be reimagined to account for the maintenance of transnational life among undocumented newcomer youth and long-settled young adults, including those unaccompanied by a parent (Canizales and O’Connor forthcoming), noting the importance of maintaining native-language proficiency and promoting “translanguaging” (Bajaj and Bartlett 2017).…”

“…Unaccompanied, undocumented youth workers draw on these roles as a key source of meaning for their education and language-learning aspirations and practices, which reflects their distinct social positions in U.S. and transnational societies as they transition into adulthood. Offering a corrective to current understandings of undocumented Latinx youth’s educational incorporation, this study’s participants, despite growing up as workers largely outside of local familial and community networks (Canizales n.d.), tended to revere education, and English language learning in particular, during their young adulthood—in part because of their absence from traditional educational settings. They navigated time and financial resource constraints in accessing education by enrolling in adult English-language schools, viewing education as valuable for their employability, promotion, and local and transnational community participation.…”