“Una Vejez Con Dignidad”: Undocumented Latinx/a/o Graduate Students' Perceptions, Responsibilities, and Strategic Practices as They Plan Beyond the Doctorate

• In Event: Navigating Access and Opportunity: Examining Challenges, Resistance, and Possibilities of Undocumented Students' Success in California

Abstract

Objectives, Framework, & Significance: Scholars have begun examining the experiences of undocumented graduate students (Escudero et al., 2019; Freeman & Valdivia, 2021; Kennedy, 2014; Lara, 2014; Landgrave, 2021; Lara & Nava, 2018; Lee, 2020; Montiel et al., 2020; Olivas, 2020) These studies have been critical in providing us sights into students’ experiences applying to and navigating graduate school. However, a significant gap remains: we have a limited understanding of students' experiences as they begin to plan beyond graduate school. This paper contributes to this line of inquiry by further centering on undocumented graduate students’ experiences.
Specifically, this paper centers on the testimonios of undocumented Latinx graduate students at the University of California (UC). Testimonios allow participants to reflect on their own experiences in their own words (Booker, 2002; Delgado Bernal et al., 2012; Latina Feminist Group, 2001; Pérez Huber, 2021). While the undocumented student college population is remarkably diverse regarding their socioeconomic backgrounds, country of origin, language spoken at home, ethnicity, and a range of immigration backgrounds (Teranishi et al., 2015), this paper focuses explicitly on undocumented Latinx/a/o graduate students. I want to make clear that identifying as undocumented should not be conflated with being Latinx/a/o. This paper uses the terms Latinx/a/o interchangeably to describe individuals who are both foreign and U.S.-born and who have ancestry to a Spanish-speaking Latin American country in Central and South America and the Caribbean (García Bedolla & Hosam, 2021).
Methods & Data Sources: This paper draws upon “liminal legality” (Menjívar, 2006), a framework that allows us to move beyond antiquated black-and-white conceptualizations of immigration status that once rendered individuals strictly documented or undocumented. Liminal legality to examine how temporary federal-level policies such as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) have granted individuals an in-between and ambiguous immigration status while failing to provide them with a pathway to regularizing their citizenship status (Cebulko, 2014; Hamilton et al., 2020; Morales Hernandez & Enriquez, 2021; Roth, 2019). I utilize liminal legality to understand how the experiences of liminal legality among undocumented and mixed-status families shape students’ perceptions, responsibilities, and strategic practices to mitigate students’ concerns over their parents' retirement.
Findings & Significance: When I invited participants to reflect on their lives beyond the doctorate and their role of their immigration status, an unexpected concern arose: parents’ subsequent retirement. Indeed, while I did not explicitly ask study participants to reflect on their parents’ retirement, over half elaborated on how their parents were approaching retirement and the accompanying implications. In the first half of the paper, I center on participants’ testimonios to capture their perceptions and concerns regarding their parents' retirement. In the second half, I highlight the quotidian strategic practices students and their families use to prepare for their parents’ retirement. This paper makes a timely contribution to two bodies of literature: (a) undocumented student studies and (b) aging and immigration.

Author

• Martha Ortega Mendoza, University of California - Berkeley