Undocumented College Students in the United States: A category in need of further analysis

This paper concerns itself with a subset of undocumented immigrants, that of undocumented students in the United States. While many sociologists have engaged with undocumented immigration in general, not much attention has been paid to this growing group and when it has been done these students were treated as a unified and undiversified category. In this letter, instead, I intend to outline some of the ways in which the label of undocumented student and its consequences may vary greatly depending on a number of different elements, among them: the different legal status of various family members, the different methods of entry in the country, family structure, and the influence of the communities that surround them.