After the Dream: Racialized Illegality, UndocuAsian Young Adult Transitions, and Institutional Response in an Anti-Immigrant Era

Siyue Lena Wang

Undocumented Asian (undocuAsian) young adults are the second-largest undocumented population in U.S. postsecondary education, yet remain nearly invisible in educational research and policy. Existing scholarship presumes undocumented students to be homogeneously Latinx, obscuring how the intersection of race and legal status produces distinct experiences of racialized illegality across groups. This project examines how undocuAsian young adults negotiate racialized illegality as they transition from college into early adulthood under escalating federal immigration enforcement, and how higher education practitioners support undocumented students amid this anti-immigrant climate. Using a longitudinal critical ethnographic design, I will conduct follow-up interviews with 25–30 undocuAsian college students originally interviewed in Spring 2024, alongside semi-structured interviews with 20 practitioners across diverse state policy contexts. Data will be analyzed using temporal matrices and narrative profiles across two time points to trace shifts in legal consciousness, institutional relationships, and identity. This project advances the theoretical framework of becomingness — a dynamic socialization process through which undocumented young adults continuously negotiate and redefine illegality, race, and belonging. Findings will generate practitioner-facing knowledge on undocu-serving capacity and contribute to educational equity scholarship at the intersection of race, immigration, and institutional practice.

About Siyue Lena Wang

Siyue Lena Wang is a Ph.D. candidate in the School of Education at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), specializing in race, ethnicity, and immigration. Her research examines how racialization and legal status shape students' college navigation, belonging, and resistance. Supported by the NAEd/Spencer Dissertation Fellowship, American Educational Research Association Minority Dissertation Fellowship and the Russell Sage Foundation Dissertation Research Grant, her dissertation investigates the educational trajectories of undocumented Asian college students and the structural barriers they encounter. Siyue has held graduate researcher and fellow positions with the USC Equity Research Institute, UCLA Prison Education Program, UCLA Labor Center, and UCLA Asia Pacific Center, contributing to research and policy initiatives that support immigrant, non-traditional, and vulnerable student populations. She collaborates with organizations such as Immigrants Rising and APIA Scholars to produce public scholarship and advocate for undocumented students' college access and AANHPI student success in higher education. Her scholarship is committed to actionable research that works alongside educators and institutions to expand college access for undocumented students. She has shared this work at national conferences, including the National Conference on Race and Ethnicity in Higher Education (NCORE) and the WESTOP Annual Conference. Beyond her research, she has served as co-chair of UCLA's Graduate Students Association of Education and continues to be actively involved in immigrant community organizations such as UPLIFT and API Rise. She aims to continue advancing scholarship on race, immigration, and education through community-engaged research while transforming academia and higher education institutions toward equity and inclusion.