Neoliberalism, Illegality, and Higher Education: Resistance and Navigation of Undocumented Community College Students in California's Central Valley

• In Event: Confronting Neoliberal Education: Policy Reform, Institutional Negotiations, and Possibilities for Structural Change

Abstract

Background/Framework & Objectives

Though recent years have been marked by meaningful gains to secure access to higher education for undocumented students in California (Ramos 2014), not all undocumented students are benefitting from these legislative advances. The immigration debate is increasingly marked by a demarcation between undocumented workers deemed unworthy of rights and protections, and the sympathetic undocumented students brought here by her/his parents (Negrón-Gonzales 2014). Within this context, there is much to learn from the experiences of young people who straddle both these identities as young, low-wage undocumented laborers in a highly segmented neoliberal labor market, who are also enrolled in the California community college system.

Methods

This paper draws on findings from an on-going qualitative, ethnographic study which examines the lives of a subset of undocumented students who are marginalized as a result of educational trajectory, geographic location, and position in the labor market - undocumented community college students in California’s rural Central Valley who are also low-wage migrant laborers. This study is unique in that it takes at its central focus the experiences and resistance strategies of young people who fall outside the traditional DREAMer construct.

Findings & Scholarly Significance

This paper examines the ways undocumented community college students in a depressed, rural context navigate higher education and “illegality”. I argue that their experiences in higher education are shaped by their racialized status as undocumented migrants within a neo-liberal context which prioritizes their productive value as low-wage, exploited laborers over their educational potential as students. This research illuminates daily acts of resistance at the site of the community college, which enable these students to (1) successfully navigate a hostile educational climate that is not designed to facilitate their success, as well as (2) engage in collective action to challenge the neo-liberalization of higher education and the re-entrenchment of migrant “illegality”.

Drawing on literature focused on educational outcomes for low-income community college students (Bailey, Jenkins and Leinbach 2005), literature on the neo-liberalization of higher education (Giroux 2014; Bousquet 2008), and literature on the social context and political lives of undocumented students (Abrego 2006; Gonzales 2011), this study aims to connect these divergent fields of inquiry by situating the education of marginalized undocumented students within the framework of neoliberalism and the geo-political reality of life in a racialized, segmented labor market. This analysis attempts to articulate “undocumented students” and “undocumented workers” as overlapping categories, and provides a concrete sense of what daily acts of resistance to neoliberalism can look like from a group of society’s most marginalized members.

Author

• Genevieve Negron-Gonzales, University of San Francisco