Legal Precarity and the Educational Experiences of Central American Unaccompanied Youth

Abstract

During the 2021 fiscal year, over 47,000 unaccompanied minors were apprehended by the United States Border Patrol along the U.S.-Mexico border (CBP, 2022). Most of these minors arrived from three northern Central American countries: Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. Many of these young people are released to sponsors throughout the United States. In 2020, it was estimated that 320,000 undocumented and asylum-seeking children from Mexico and northern Central America were enrolled in K-12 schools in the United States, a number that included unaccompanied youth (RAND, 2021). While research focused on unaccompanied minors has primarily examined the uncertainty these young people face in navigating the immigration system and seeking asylum in the United States (Heidbrink 2014; Terrio 2015; Androff 2016; Song 2017; Cardoso 2018; Sawyer & Marquez 2017), less is known about their educational experiences once in the United States. This dissertation analyzes how legal precarity can shape the educational experiences of Central American unaccompanied youth. Classifying a minor as an “unaccompanied alien child” does not confer any legal status which means these young people must navigate both the immigration system and the education system simultaneously as they attempt to forge lives for themselves in the United States. To achieve an analysis that considers the production of legal precarity in the lives of unaccompanied youth beyond the present, this dissertation consists of three articles. Article one examines how legal precarity has been produced and reproduced through the different branches of the United States government. Article two moves into the present and uses data from semi-structured interviews with sixteen educators at Northeast High School to understand how educators conceive of their role in the education and lives of Central American unaccompanied youth. The last article analyzes data from interviews and participant observations with seven Central American unaccompanied youth to understand how the youth conceptualize youthhood and education through a transnational lens. The three articles are tied together by an inquiry based on how legal precarity and education come together (or not) in the lives of Central American unaccompanied youth. Specifically, this project considers how legal precarity operates in different spheres at the historical, structural, and transnational levels to shape the educational experiences of these youth. Each article focuses on these different levels and weaves together these various spheres through an analysis that is anchored by placing the Central American unaccompanied minor at the center. By moving within and between each sphere, this dissertation examines how the historical, structural, and transnational mechanisms of precarity construct the past and present realities of Central American unaccompanied youth. The dissertation ends with implications for research, policy, and practice that ultimately asks us to consider what it might look like to provide a sustainable education for unaccompanied youth.