Amplifying the Voices of Immigrant Students

We continued our discussion of intersectional education issues, this time particularly for undocumented Latinx students.

Ch. 34, “Academic Resilience Among Undocumented Latino Students,” William Perez, Roberta Espinoza, Karina Ramos, Heidi M. Coronado, and Richard Cortes

Undocumented Latino youth face additional risk factors and sources of stress above and beyond the challenges of biculturalism they share with documented Latino youth. Perez et al.’s study examines the role of protective resources in mediating the academic achievement of 110 undocumented Latino high school, community college, and university students across the United States. They found that even in the presence of multiple sources of psychosocial risk (high school employment, low parental education, large family size, and alienation resulting from undocumented status), personal and environmental resources increased resilience and improved academic performance. Students with lower risk factors (protected) and those with high risk factors but also high personal and environmental resources (resilient) had better academic outcomes than those who had high risk factors but who lacked personal and environmental resources (high risk). Environmental resources—high parental value of school, extracurricular participation, and volunteering—were especially found to protect students from risk and create resilience among those with higher risk factors, with extracurricular participation and volunteerism being the strongest predictors of academic achievement among undocumented Latino students. This underscores the importance of environmental opportunities to develop relationships with supportive adults and peers and points toward the potential for schools to serve as organizational bases for mobilizing community resources to enhance resilience for undocumented students.

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Communicating Gender, Race, and Class: 2020

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