Resistance Through Joy: How Racially Minoritized Undocumented Students Use Their UndocuJoy to Persist (Poster 31)

• In Event: Excellence in Education Research: Early Career Scholars and Their Work

Abstract

This study examined how college students who identify as Black (inclusive of AfroLatinxs), non-Black Mexican, and also undocumented in the Southwest and Northeast regions of the United States use joy as resistance to navigate their lives while in college. A lack of published empirical research exists on how these collegians experience and embrace joy despite navigating barriers, such as anti-im/migrant exclusionary policies and racist nativist sociopolitical and campus climates. Critical race counterstories, through narrative inquiry, are shared. The findings reveal these collegians’ joyful experiences (i.e., UndocuJoy) with biological and chosen family and communal and artistic joy. Recommendations for research and practice are provided for higher education agents at all levels. 

Author

• Stephen Santa-Ramirez, University at Buffalo - SUNY
  Presenting Author