Bureaucratic Erasure and Conditional Belonging in US Schools: Undocumented Chinese Youth Between Hyper-Selection and Illegality

• In Event: Asia and Asian American Section Roundtables Session
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Table 4: Asia and Asian America Section Roundtable - Education

Abstract

Scholarship on undocumented students largely centers Latine experiences, implicitly racializing illegality as a Latine condition, while research on Chinese and Asian American students emphasizes hyper-selection and academic mobility. This bifurcation renders undocumented Chinese youth conceptually marginalized within both literatures. Drawing on a qualitative multi-method study that combines ethnographic fieldwork and in-depth interviews with predominantly high school-aged Chinese immigrant youth navigating precarious legal status in New York City, alongside a critical analysis of immigration, education, and media discourse, this paper examines how legal uncertainty becomes institutionally sidelined through newcomer classification and model minority expectations. I argue that these students experience bureaucratic erasure: their struggles are interpreted primarily through English language learner (ELL) frameworks and assumptions of eventual upward mobility, leaving the structural consequences of legal insecurity and everyday hardship unaddressed. As a result, undocumented Chinese youth are recognized as immigrant newcomers, while the structural and emotional consequences of their precarious legal status remain largely ignored, particularly for those from working-class families. Extending theories of racialized illegality beyond Latine-centered analyses, this study also pushes Asian American scholarship to more directly confront how legal status and class shape educational trajectories within K–12 schooling. By challenging model minority logics and exposing institutional misrecognition, it underscores the need for culturally relevant and culturally sustaining school practices that affirm students lived realities and legal vulnerabilities, cultivating belonging rather than reproducing stratified inclusion.

Author

• Jia-Lin Liu, California State University-Los Angeles