In College and Undocumented: An Analysis of the Educational Trajectories of Undocumented Students in North Carolina

In 2012 implementation of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) allowed for more than 1.5 million undocumented youth to become eligible for work authorization and to qualify for institutional and in some cases, state financial aid (Passel 2012). With these changes, access to higher education became a realistic possibility for undocumented youth all around the United States. Nevertheless, a generation of undocumented students who managed to navigate the college application process and successfully enrolled in institutions of higher education remained. My research focusses on this generation in relation to their experiences as undocumented students in North Carolina. In conducting interviews in the cities of Winston-Salem and Raleigh, North Carolina, I identified three primary themes, (1) Paying for College, (2) Lack of Guidance, (3) Discrimination, and three secondary themes (1) The Cinderella Effect and the Junior Year Crash, (2) Lack of Continuity, (3) Patriotism and Desire to Join the Military, that contributed to the obstacles these students encountered in their journey to higher education.