UCLA

In recent years, hundreds of thousands of adolescents have migrated to the United States, and many are not native English speakers. In schools, these “newcomer youth” are labeled “English learners.” Educational practitioners (e.g., researchers) have primarily focused on examining and implementing educational practices targeting learners’ acquisition of English language skills. Little is known about how newcomer youth make sense of their educational experiences or their college aspirations. My study addressed this gap in the literature. Informed by the theoretical frameworks of multilevel intersectionality (N��ez, 2014a) and illegality (De Genova, 2002), I investigated how school practices create differential high-school-to-college trajectories for newcomer youth of diverse backgrounds across race, social class, age, gender, and legal status. Three questions guided this dissertation:1. What are newcomer youth’s college and career aspirations? 2. How do school organization and services for ELs affect newcomer students’ access to college preparatory coursework and shape their college and career readiness (CCR)? 3. What barriers do newcomer youth encounter in moving toward their future goals? To explore the future aspirations of newcomer youth and how their aspirations are informed, guided, and supported by educators in high school, I drew from a variety of data sources, including field notes, ethnographic interviews, and school artifacts (e.g., high school transcripts). Findings revealed how the heterogeneity of newcomer youth’s social identities creates divergent educational trajectories. Their divergent pathways begin with the legal statuses the government used to categorize their arrival to the United States and the decisions school staff make during the enrollment process. These enrollment decisions involve newcomer youth’s graduation plans, which consider past educational experiences and age. I also found, despite the school’s best intentions to address the exclusion of newcomer youth because of their English learner label, students continued to be mistreated because of their indigenous identities and status as language learners. Finally, I detail how newcomer youth experienced limited access to explore their future college and career aspirations. This dissertation concludes by addressing how these findings inform theory, hold implications for policy and practice, and affect how educators prepare newcomer youth to be college and career ready.