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Cited by 799

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 81 of the 81 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Learning to Be Illegal: Undocumented Youth and Shifting Legal Contexts in the Transition to Adulthood

Gonzales, Roberto G.·2011·American Sociological Review
DOI 10.1177/0003122411411901
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Abstract

This article examines the transition to adulthood among 1.5-generation undocumented Latino young adults. For them, the transition to adulthood involves exiting the legally protected status of K to 12 students and entering into adult roles that require legal status as the basis for participation. This collision among contexts makes for a turbulent transition and has profound implications for identity formation, friendship patterns, aspirations and expectations, and social and economic mobility. Undocumented children move from protected to unprotected, from inclusion to exclusion, from de facto legal to illegal. In the process, they must learn to be illegal, a transformation that involves the almost complete retooling of daily routines, survival skills, aspirations, and social patterns. These findings have important implications for studies of the 1.5- and second-generations and the specific and complex ways in which legal status intervenes in their coming of age. The article draws on 150 interviews with undocumented 1.5-generation young adult Latinos in Southern California.

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Metadata

Authors
Gonzales, R. G.
Venue
American Sociological Review
Publisher
SAGE Publications
Published
2011-08
Volume
76
Issue
4
Pages
602-619
ISSN
  • 0003-1224 (ISSN-L)
  • 1939-8271
DOI
10.1177/0003122411411901
OpenAlex
W2052103733
Cited by
799
References
81
FWCI
974.86
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Learning to Be Illegal: Undocumented Youth and Shifting Legal Contexts in the Transition to Adulthood. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1177/0003122411411901
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Gonzales, R. G. (2011). Learning to Be Illegal: Undocumented Youth and Shifting Legal Contexts in the Transition to Adulthood. American Sociological Review. https://doi.org/10.1177/0003122411411901

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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.