Legal Vulnerability and Campus Environment: Assessing Factors that Affect the Academic Engagement of Undocumented College Students

ABSTRACT

Prior research has established that undocumented students experience structural marginalization which compromises their access, retention, and success in higher education. Building on this work, this study turns attention to their academic engagement, an important intermediary outcome. Using survey data collected from 1,277 undocumented undergraduate students attending California 4-year public universities, we examine the extent to which legal vulnerability, campus climate, and resource use are associated with positive and negative academic engagement. Findings reveal the sustained role of campus environment, as positive perceptions of campus climate are associated with positive engagement and negative perceptions with negative engagement. Use of various campus resources tends to be associated with increased positive engagement and decreased negative engagement. Only financial legal vulnerabilities are associated with negative engagement and are not associated with positive engagement. We contend that the campus environment plays an important role in fostering undocumented students’ academic engagement.

KEYWORDS:

• Undocumented students
• higher education
• academic engagement
• legal vulnerability
• campus climate
• resource use

Acknowledgments

Thanks the UC PromISE co-investigators (Jennifer Nájera, Annie Ro, and Zulema Valdez) and USEP project collaborators (Karina Chavarria, Basia Ellis, Melissa J. Hagan, Jannet Lara, Martha Morales Hernandez, Enrique Murillo Jr., Carly Offidani-Bertrand, Maria Oropeza Fujimoto, Victoria E. Rodriguez, William Rosales, Heidy Sarabia, Ana K. Soltero López, and Sharon Velarde Pierce).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This study was conducted with the support of funding from the University of California Multicampus Research Programs and Initiatives (grant number: MRI-19-601090), CSU Channel Islands Vice President for Student Affairs, CSU Fresno Kremen School of Education & Human Development, CSU Los Angeles College of Education, CSU Sacramento Center on Race, Immigration, and Social Justice, and San Francisco State University College of Science and Engineering.