Undocumented and Unwanted: Attending College Against the Odds

Undocumented immigrant postsecondary students face myriad challenges while pursuing a college education. Garcia focuses on the experiences of nine students attending a public comprehensive postsecondary institution in California to assess how different types of social capital help students pursue a college education. She demonstrates how students were wholly or partly reliant on various types of social capital accessed before and during matriculation. Three of the major findings are: institutional agents were instrumental in developing students' social capital, family- and peer-based social capital was important to students' matriculation, and perceptions about immigration status affected students' matriculation and social capital development.