CLSC | Socio-Legal Studies Book Talk: Laura Enriquez - Family Legal Vulnerability: How Immigration Policy Shapes the Lives of Latino College Students

Abstract
Based on survey and interview data, this book examines how legal vulnerability is experienced by college students in immigrant families. Focusing on the case of Latina/o/x students attending the University of California, we expose how their educational experiences and social mobility are shaped – not only by their own immigration status – but also by their family members’ undocumented immigration status. We introduce family legal vulnerability as a novel framework to capture how undocumented and mixed-status immigrant family members collectively experience deportability, economic insecurity, discrimination, social exclusion, and legal uncertainty. We trace how family legal vulnerability cascades through the lives of undocumented and U.S. citizen students from mixed-status families.