Beyond Dreamers: Transitions to Adulthood in an Uncertain Age

Join Sofya Aptekar and Shannon Gleeson for a conversation on Beyond Dreamers: Transitions to Adulthood in an Uncertain Age. Beyond Dreamers deftly underscores how deeply legal uncertainty continues to structure the lives of undocumented young adults. Drawing on more than one hundred interviews with a racially and ethnically diverse group of undocumented college students in New York City, with and without DACA authorization, Aptekar and Hsin show that there is no single undocumented experience. They find that while legal status matters enormously, its impacts are influenced by race, national origin, gender, class, sexuality, family resources, educational institutions, neighborhood contexts, and access to local and transnational co-ethnic communities and labor markets. These forces not only shape the kinds of opportunities available to undocumented young adults, but how they choose to approach disclosing their undocumented status and interact with family, peers, employers, professors, and police.