Stratified Lives: Family, Illegality, and the Rise of a New Educational Elite

Abstract

In this research article, Leah Schmalzbauer and Alelí Andrés examine the educational mobility of low-income US citizen and DACAmented youth who are members of mixedstatus families. Drawing from thirty life history interviews with Latinx students attending a top-tier liberal arts college, and based on ethnographic case studies of eight of their families, they explore what it is like to experience an elite education as a member of a socially and legally marginalized family. They found that their research participants' lives were stratified. While most thrived academically and were primed for individual socioeconomic mobility, they continued to bear the heavy weight of their parents' deportability, a burden that was invisible to faculty, staff, and most student peers. The authors contend that the invisible burdens and responsibilities associated with family illegality block students' full integration into the elite educational strata and cause stress and anxiety.