Traerás tus Documentos (you will bring your documents): navigating the intersections of disability and citizenship status in special education

ABSTRACT

DisCrit has illuminated the interconnectivity of racism and ableism, though the experiences of undocumented youth and families enrolled in special education are largely unknown. In this paper, we explore the experiences of students at the intersection of disability and migratory status, examining the interplay of fear, schooling, and language use as students pursue college. We use DisCrit to help us understand historical patterns surrounding citizenship and how race, ableism, and documentation status continue to intersect and shape the acknowledgment of which bodies – with which papers – are rendered deserving. Examining interviews with students, researcher memos and fieldnotes, and researcher reflections, we consider the cases of Fernanda, an undocumented high schooler, and Daniel, a 9th grader from a mixed-citizenship status family. We highlight how students at the intersection of migratory status and disability are met with care by teachers and schools, yet remain unsupported in several domains. We also highlight how students experience the movement from entitlement to eligibility in schools, and discuss complications surrounding documentation of disability for disclosure and language. In light of our findings, we suggest implications for research and practice.

KEYWORDS:

• DisCrit
• UndocuCrit
• documentation
• special education
• citizenship

Acknowledgment

Our heartfelt thanks to Professor Audrey Trainor and the PSSIEP research team at New York University for their support, encouragement, and collaboration. We wish to thank the reviewers who provided helpful suggestions to improve and clarify the manuscript. Finally, many thanks to David Connor, Subini Annama, and Beth Ferri for their guidance throughout this process. The authors would like to acknowledge that this paper was equally coauthored together.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1. In the same way we employ dis/abled to recognize the false binary between abled and disabled, we use un/documented at times to highlight how documentation is specific to a given nation-state. For example, a student who is considered ‘undocumented’ in the United States who has citizenship in their home country has documentation, just not the ‘right’ kind in the eyes of the state. Additionally, a student in a mixed-citizenship status family might experience this spectrum of documentation, even if they themselves are ‘documented’ by the state.

Additional information

Funding

The research reported here was supported by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through Grant R305A170259 to New York University. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent views of the Institute or the U.S. Department of Education.