From Untapped to Exploited: The Myriad Assets of Undocu/DACAmented Latina/o/x Students in the Midwest

While undocu/DACAmented students face many challenges in higher education, their lives demonstrate a tremendous amount of motivation, resilience, commitment, and perseverance. The literature on undocumented students has indicated that these students bring a vast array of assets to college–assets that can be used to improve the campus and the experiences of undocu/DACAmented individuals. However, undocu/DACAmented student assets are often undervalued. In this critical qualitative study of testimonios with 15 undocu/DACAmented Latinx collegians, we examine how institutions utilize, underutilize, or exploit these students’ assets to ask at what point acknowledging and recognizing students’ assets turns into exploiting them. Our findings revealed these collegians hold myriad assets and institutions responded to those assets by sometimes acknowledging and rewarding them, failing to acknowledge these assets, or exploiting them. Recommendations for equitable and ethical recognition and collaboration with undocu/DACAmented collegians are provided.