Testimonios of Undocumented Latina/o High School Students in North Carolina

• In Event: Roundtable Session 11
  In Roundtable Session: Educational Issues and Possibilities in New Immigrant Gateway States: The Case of North Carolina

Abstract

This qualitative study shares the testimonios of nine undocumented Latin@ students who are high-“achieving” and have strong aspirations in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), in a Title I high school in North Carolina. The students dream of someday pursuing futures in STEM despite racial, ethnic, and political barriers due to their undocumented status. Through the frameworks of Borderlands/Anzaldúan theory, Lugones’ Loving Playfulness/World Traveling, and Latino Critical Race Theory (LatCrit) this study puts a human face on the complex political and educational situations which these students traverse. Data were collected during a full school year with follow-up contact into the present, with over 133 hours immersed in the field, involving 22 individual student interviews, six student focus group interviews, 14 teacher interviews, field notes from over 79 contact hours with participants in formal and informal STEM education settings, and document review.
Each student testifies to their struggle with racism, nativism, and North Carolina policies of restricted college access. Students persevere in spite of these obstacles to “prove” their “worth” and rise above deficit narratives in the public discourse regarding students of their ethnicity and undocumented status, and hold onto hope for legislation that may change their current limited prospects. These students’ lived realities, identifying as undocumented and DREAM Act eligible, or “DREAMers,” show that more work must be done, beyond the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) permits some have received, before these students’ dreams can be realized. This is especially pertinent as North Carolina has one of the largest Latin@ growth rates in the nation, having increased by over 1000% between 1989-2009, of which a significant number are undocumented. Further, an estimated 1,500 undocumented students graduate from high school in North Carolina every year. Although North Carolina has been estimated to benefit greatly from the contributions of students like these with an estimated $34.7 billion to the gross state product (GSP), with a corresponding increase of over $1.5 billion contributed by these immigrants in state taxes and 5,000 additional jobs created annually, should these students be allowed into college and the state workforce; current North Carolina law forces these students to pay out-of-state tuition at state universities, ranging from an insurmountable $10,000-$20,000 annually, they must give up their seat to citizens in any class that reaches capacity, and are prohibited from attaining professional licenses or entry into the School of Science and Mathematics. This severely limits these students’ ability and hope to enter college and contribute to STEM in the ways they dream of doing. This study adds to the STEM education research by providing insights into the lives of students who are Latin@ and undocumented, a considerable population in many STEM-area classes yet rarely discussed in STEM education literature. Implications of this study suggest new ways of understanding this population in non-deficit ways that advocate changing the public dialogue and taking educational and political steps towards social change in solidarity with this group of students.

Author

• Jean Rockford Aguilar-Valdez, Portland State Univeristy