Separated by Removal: The Impact of Parental Deportation on Latina/o Students' Postsecondary Educational Goals

• In Event: 65.024 - Breaking the Silence: Unprecedented Deportations and Undocumented Status Across Contexts of Teaching and Learning

Abstract

In the past decade, the mass deportation of predominantly noncriminal immigrants from Mexico and Central America (73 and 19 percent of all deportations, respectively) has resulted in the forced separation of numerous families (Hoefner, Rytina, & Baker, 2012, p. 4). Specifically, over 90 thousand foreign-born parents of U.S citizen children are deported annually (Wessler, 2012). At a time in which nearly one fourth of all deportations are issued to parents of U.S citizens, the number of children affected by parental deportations is expected to increase (Passel & Cohn, 2012; Wessler, 2012), and teachers across receiving contexts need to be better prepared to support students from undocumented families.

This paper examines the impact of parental deportation on U.S citizen Latino/a adolescents’ postsecondary aspirations. The questions that guide the study are: 1) How does parental deportation affect high school age adolescents’ attitude towards attending college? 2) How is social capital available to the adolescent influenced, if at all, by parental deportation? We employ Coleman (1988) and Stanton-Salazar’s (2001) distinct renditions of social capital theory in this work to thoroughly examine the role of familial relationships and social networks in our participants’ creation, cultivation, and/or loss of post-secondary aspirations after a parental deportation.

This qualitative collective case study is set in a region of a Midwestern state where established families with mixed immigration status have become fearful of and/or been separated due to harsh immigration enforcement efforts. Participants included five adolescents who had had at least one deported parent, their parent who remained with them in the U.S, and people who had close knowledge of each family’s forced separation. The primary author conducted numerous open-ended, semi-structured interviews with participants and site observations in each of the adolescents’ homes and school environments. Data analysis consisted of coding for common themes using a multiple case studies coding scheme (Creswell, 2007). To assure the accuracy and credibility of the findings, we employed triangulation, member checking and peer review.

This study finds that for some adolescents who held college aspirations prior to the deportation, the abrupt parental removal negatively affected their perception of safety and stability in their home and school environments. Where this instability was not countered with emotional, economic, and institutional support, it hindered their development of social capital (Coleman 1988; Stanton-Salazar, 2001) conducive to their higher educational aspirations.

Through the unique focus on the effects of parental deportation on U.S. citizen students’ post-secondary aspirations in a newer Latino settlement area, this piece contributes to important findings from scholars who illustrate that family-member deportations are detrimental to a child’s emotional and development wellbeing, as well as their scholastic performance and educational attainment (Capps et al., 2007; Chaundry et al., 2010; Fortuny et al., 2009; Wessler, 2011; & Yoshikawa, 2011). In this paper we draw upon the perspectives and experiences of adolescents and their support communities to explore the need to better prepare educators and educational institutions serving youth from mixed status families across receiving contexts.

Authors

• Luis Fernando Macias, The Ohio State University - Columbus

• Bruce Anthony Collet, Bowling Green State University