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Living Undocumented: Stories Across Difference
February 16, 2023 @ 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm
Panel Description: Storytellers from various ethnoracial backgrounds will discuss their community’s and their own relationship to undocumentation. We will examine how issues pertaining to undocumentation are not single-group concerns, rather, they crosscut all communities in ways that are both shared and distinct.
The United States is home to at least 3.9 million undocumented young people. Statistically, only between 1 and 3% of these will ever graduate from college (compared to a college graduation rate of 38% for US citizens). With personal and/or family ties to places across the globe, undocumented young people are Latinx, Indigenous, Asian and Asian American, African, Caribbean, Middle Eastern, and European. They are also profoundly American, and their life chances are dramatically diminished by their exclusion from opportunities of higher education.
Of the fortunate few undocumented young people who do enter college, national statistics show they are Latinx (48%), AAPI (24%), Black (13%), White (13%), and some other race (2%) (2019 American Community Survey). While these categories are inherently flawed (erasing Indigeneity, conflating ethnic and racial categories, and failing to account for multi-raciality) they are helpful in showing that undocumentation in higher ed is an issue that crosscuts our communities, and one that requires collaborative solutions.