This chapter provides an overview of the literature on labor politics, social movements, and political parties, and locates the main argument in this literature. It operationalizes the two organizational traits, hierarchical relations and factionalism, to show how they produce three strategies. It concludes by laying out the research methods used to carry out the analysis and reach these conclusions.

The COVID-19 pandemic created unprecedented challenges for many Hispanic/Latino/x college students, especially for Hispanic/Latino/x college-enrolled men who were undocumented in South Texas. We used an asset-based lens to explore the nuanced educational experiences of these students. Specifically, we relied on Yosso’s theoretical framework of community cultural wealth to describe how these students overcame various institutional barriers during the COVID-19 pandemic (Yosso, 2005). Their voices revealed a complex portrait of how they made courageous decisions to apply and enroll in college and fund their college education to earn a college degree or credential, despite their immigration status, so they may financially contribute to their families and local communities. Additionally, these students also described how they navigated their educational and career options despite the limited options for future employment. These findings provide a positive view of these students’ courage and resilience to improve their lives through education, despite their immigration status and the difficulties of the COVID-19 pandemic.

This chapter analyzes the organizational prerequisites for the strategy of instrumentalism, by charting changes in the organizational structure of the National Educational Workers Union (SNTE) of Mexico in the 1980s and 1990s. It examines the threats to the corporatist model posed by the dissident movement and the regime response to help the union leadership regain control. President Carlos Salinas sheltered the union from the potentially disruptive effects of education decentralization policies and strengthened SNTE with policies to improve teacher pay. These concessions shaped the union’s internal organization, providing the resources Elba Esther Gordillo needed to build a dominant faction. The consolidation of power in the national union leadership was crucial for the strategy of instrumentalism.

An undocumented individual is a person who entered the United States without inspection or someone who has overstayed their visa (Passel, ). Undocumented individuals and their families face many challenges acclimating to and settling in the United States, including the risk of deportation and not being able to work lawfully.Undocumented youth face additional barriers as they navigate educational settings and enter adulthood. Institutions of higher education must understand the distinct experiences and needs of the undocumented student population toward realizing students’ success in their pursuit and completion of higher education. This chapter explores how postsecondary institutions and personnel can better support undocumented students. We begin by reviewing key federal, state, and local policies impacting undocumented students. Next, we evaluate and synthesize literature on the pre-college, college, and post-college experiences of these students. We subsequently use an ecological framework to summarize good practices at the macro, exo, micro, and individual levels of systems toward undocumented student success. We illustrate specific examples of good practices.

This chapter shows how the bottom-up organization of CTERA was crucial for movementism. The mark of the activist base on protests is reflected in the fact that protests were organized primarily at the provincial and municipal levels, were widespread across provinces, and recurred over time. The chapter then examines the union’s role in electoral politics. While some union leaders became politicians, the union was not beholden to any political party and it lacked a coherent partisan identity. The last section analyzes the policy dynamics that ensued from movementism and the extent to which the creation of a new national institution of collective bargaining for teachers transformed the union’s political repertoire. It is shown that movementism remained largely in place.

US universities continue to recruit and engage international students in ways that result in their othering, exclusion, and compromised well-being. As such, scholarship that amplifies the voices of international students attending US colleges is needed. With the increasing attention and push for inclusion and equity work in higher education, it is imperative to account for international students’ experiences within this dialogue and identify policies and practices that will positively contribute to their well-being and success. Using a transnational lens, we interrogate existing systems and offer recommendations to US institutional personnel to better support international student well-being and success. The purpose of this work is twofold: (1) to illuminate how current structures of US higher education systems thwart international students’ well-being and success, and (2) through our analysis of existing literature, to provide recommendations to best support international student well-being and success.

This chapter – offered by the co-editors – situates the need for “Supporting College Students of Immigrant Origin: New Insights from Research, Policy, and Practice” in both historical and contemporary social, political, and cultural contexts. It also offers a blueprint for how a range of higher education stakeholders can engage with the volume and its individual chapters, which are organized into four distinct parts that chronologically trace students of immigrant origin’s journeys as they relate to higher education.

This study used semi-structured interviews to examine daily stressors and coping resources as experienced by twenty-one racially and/or ethnically diverse, undocumented college students residing in Massachusetts (USA). A legal violence framework and stress process theory were used to analyze the stress and coping experiences of undocumented college students. The findings reveal the presence of financial burdens, fears of deportation, blocked opportunities, and legal status concealment as daily stressors, as well as needed peer and informational supports as coping resources for undocumented students. Furthermore, for undocumented students, fear of deportation and stigma hindered their ability to identify and capitalize on needed peer and institutional support. The authors argue that not recognizing the structural and symbolic ways that immigration laws serve as legitimizing sources for afflicting social, psychological, and material harm places students with precarious legal status at risk for poor mental health. This chapter concludes by offering practice implications to help improve the ability of institutional agents within higher education to meet the needs of undocumented college students.

We utilize asset-based frameworks to examine how college-aspiring multilingual, mainly Latina/o and African American, adolescent students from immigrant backgrounds negotiate college-related pressures and constraints and employ college knowledge when mentoring emerging bilingual immigrant peers. Using interviews, post-mentoring reflections, and critical qualitative inquiry, we highlight the mentors’ agency, constraints, and lack of institutional support as they navigated college and financial-aid processes for themselves and their immigrant peers. We discuss policy implications and the need for future research on peers in supporting tailored college guidance and in empowering students from immigrant, low-income backgrounds given their institutional constraints.

First-generation immigrants and refugees (newcomers hereafter) enroll in college at high rates often motivated by high aspirations and optimistic views about the potential for education to stimulate social mobility in the United States. In their pursuits, however, newcomers face many obstacles to completing their degree. This chapter draws on Bourdieu’s theory of cultural capital to explore the postsecondary aspirations and experiences of eighteen current and recently graduated newcomer college students. Through in-depth interviews, participants documented the challenges they faced during their transition to college. This chapter draws attention to the social and structural challenges facing newcomers as they transition to college as well as the resources on which they may draw in their educational pursuits. For instance, while participants demonstrated fortitude and determination to succeed in college, many also expressed concerns that they would not be able to fulfill their career goals and high aspirations. The findings offered in this chapter have practical implications for educators and policymakers seeking to improve the completion rates of newcomer college students.

This chapter considers insights from the argument that extend to a broader set of cases, given the global scope of teacher mobilization. It analyzes the shadow cases of teachers in Chile (leftism), Peru (movementism), and Indonesia (instrumentalism) to again demonstrate the crucial importance of union organizations. Finally, it considers avenues for future research on education policymaking, interest representation, and labor politics. A more comparative approach to the study of education is needed in political science to illuminate the different dynamics unfolding in public school systems in countries around the world.

This chapter aims to provide recommendations for how colleges can best support working college students of immigrant origin. It examines which challenges these students encounter when juggling full-time studies with working 20 or more hours a week during the academic year. Drawing on findings from qualitative, semi-structured interviews with twenty-four undergraduate students of immigrant origin in the northeastern United States, we show that these students face a confluence of challenges. The participants experienced academic, emotional, and social difficulties resulting from a time deficit and found the unpredictability of work hours and schedules challenging. They reported stress, anxiety, emotional depletion, sleep deprivation, exhaustion, and a lack of faculty support. We offer program and policy suggestions for higher education administrations and faculty to stem this confluence of challenges. These include gathering institutional data about the labor force engagement of their student population, vetting jobs on and near campus for their “student friendliness” (set time schedules and predictable, limited hours), and educating students about which jobs are student-friendly.

The increase of immigrant-origin students in higher education presses the need for new ways of understanding their university experiences. Using the concept of Funds of Knowledge, this qualitative study highlights how students experiencing food insecurity use lessons from their families to strategically navigate selective, affluent environments of resources and privilege.