“I’ve Lived Everything They Are Trying to Teach Me”: Latinx Immigrant Youth’s Ambivalent Educational Mobility in White Evangelical Universities

Undocumented Latinx youth in Tennessee envision higher education as the single pathway to enable their upward economic and social mobility. Many of these young people enroll private, historically white, Evangelical Christian colleges that provide financial support otherwise unavailable undocumented youth. At same time, university actors struggle meet students’ other needs minoritized individuals. Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork, I demonstrate how with hidden personal costs educational access mobility it promises. Most significantly, immigrant must navigate tensions between ever-present legacy racial segregation animus traditions status embodiment newfound, institutionally desirable “diversity.” As students negotiate deeply racialized academic orders, they grow ambivalent about promises mobility, particularly if is contingent upon conforming “respectable” forms diversity. Centering youth’s ambivalence reveals both value those experiencing limits policies intended increase access.