(Mis)Recognizing Undocumented Students & Families in a Rural School

ABSTRACT

School and educator responses to the immigration policy environment may depend on what educators know about who is in their school community. This paper examines whether and how educators in a rural Midwestern community recognize undocumented and mixed-legal status students in their school community. We utilize concepts from recognition theory to understand the mechanisms that may have facilitated or hindered an elementary school principal and two teams of 3rd and 4th grade teachers’ recognition. The findings present a picture of a school in the nascent stages of recognizing how the sociopolitical climate and enforcement of immigration law powerfully impact children and families.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. We utilize the term “Latinx” to be gender inclusive of people of Latin American heritage. The use of “Hispanic” elsewhere in the paper is the term that the resources cited use.

2. A chilled environment means conditions are such that a child or family fears coming to school or avoids school based on their legal status.

3. All names in this paper are pseudonyms.

4. Major, comprehensive immigration reform has not been passed in over twodecades, or since the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, or “IIRIRA”).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the University of Missouri Research Council.