Educational Meaning Making and Language Learning: Understanding the Educational Incorporation of Unaccompanied, Undocumented Latinx Youth Workers in the United States

Abstract

Immigration scholars agree that educational attainment is essential for the success of immigrant youth in U.S. society and functions as a key indicator of how youth will fare in their transition into adulthood. Research warns of downward or stagnant mobility for people with lower levels of educational attainment. Yet much existing research takes for granted that immigrant youth have access to a normative parent-led household, K–12 schools, and community resources. Drawing on four years of ethnographic observations and interviews with undocumented Latinx young adults (ages 18 to 31) who arrived in Los Angeles, California, as unaccompanied youth, I examine the educational meaning making and language learning of Latinx individuals coming of age as workers without parents and legal status. Findings show that Latinx immigrant youth growing up outside of Western-normative parent-led households and K–12 schools and who remain tied to left-behind families across transnational geographies tend to equate education with English language learning. Education—as English language learning—is essential to sobrevivencia, or survival, during their transition to young adulthood as workers and transnational community participants.