Protective or Prejudiced? Differential Counselor Advising and the Racialized Politics of College-Going for Undocumented Immigrant Students

• In Event: Children and Youth Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 5: Migration, Mobility, and Navigating State Systems

Abstract

High school counselors are among the most proximate institutional actors in undocumented immigrant students' college-going trajectories, yet little is known about how counselors' own assumptions shape the guidance they provide. This paper examines whether and how a student's country of origin influences the college advice undocumented students receive from high school counselors. Drawing on an experimental vignette survey (N=247) and semi-structured interviews (N=20) with public high school counselors in Massachusetts, we presented respondents with profiles of two fictitious immigrant students — Connor, from Ireland, and Pedro, from El Salvador — and analyzed differences in the college-going advice counselors offered each.

Results from a test of means revealed a statistically significant difference: counselors were significantly less likely to advise Pedro to return to his home country to pursue college (M=3.74) than they were to advise Connor to do so (M=3.31, t=−4.43, df=158.98, p<.001). This difference emerged exclusively on the return migration question and counselors did not differ significantly in how they advised the two students across any of the three domestic college-going options presented. This specificity suggests the differences are not a product of generalized bias, but of country-specific assumptions about opportunity, safety, and legitimacy. Interview data illuminate the mechanisms driving this pattern. Some counselors, drew on structural reasoning, framing the U.S. as objectively more advantageous given Massachusetts' 2024 implementation of a free community college policy. Others, like Caitlin, reproduced racialized assumptions about students' college-going cultures that varied by national origin. Together, these findings extend existing literature on inequitable advising for undocumented students by showing that country of origin structures counselor advice. We situate these results within frameworks of American Exceptionalism and culturally responsive counseling to argue that even well-intentioned advising can reproduce inequality when shaped by unexamined assumptions about where students come from.

Authors

• Alessandra Bazo Vienrich, Rhode Island College

• Amaya Fiske, Rhode Island College