Status Convergence: A Sociological Investigation of Undocumented Students' Legal and Collegiate Social Statuses

This qualitative study examines the role of college in how undocumented students make meaning of their identity through the concept of status ownership. Using a sociological framework that drew upon Kaufman and Feldman's (2004) work, this study calls attention to the social context in the college experience and offers insight into this student populations' social and legal identity construction. The findings provide higher education administrators an opportunity to further understand the connections between college as a certification into a new societal status and the way this impacts students who enter college with the socially-rejected label of illegal.