Undocumented youth are often viewed through the lens of marginalization. Disadvantage due to socio-economic class, racialized minority status, and other factors are compounded by a legal status that excludes them from accessing resources other young adults take for granted upon reaching the age of 18.  These young people experience multiple forms of disadvantage related to intersectional aspects of their identities.  Using this lens, however, can obscure the strengths and resilience exhibited by undocumented youth as they navigate systems stacked against them. 

In this subproject, we started a co-creative research group with eight members, five of whom were undocumented or formerly undocumented.  This group identified research goals aligned with the priorities of undocumented youth, with a strong focus on mental well-being.  Examining the experience of undocumented youth who attend higher education can help us understand the resilience of undocumented youth and how their experiences can be used to inform institutional transformation to create more sustainable, institutional forms of resilience.

In the short article below, we discuss the mental wellbeing impacts experienced by undocumented youth when they enter higher education, along with the strategies they use to cope with this transition.  Although institutions of higher education in several Dutch cities have created agreements to allow undocumented youth access to higher education, access is not enough to create inclusive environments where these youth can thrive.  The coping strategies employed by undocumented youth are utilized to identify the types of institutional transformations necessary to promote inclusive institutional environments. 

The experiences of undocumented youth highlight the tensions between resilience at the individual level, the community level, and the institutional level.  Environments such as higher education and the labour market, as well as other environments influenced by government institutions, exclude undocumented youth by design.  Youth who engage with these institutions, such as those working towards degrees in higher education, must call on resources from their home communities and within themselves to survive and thrive, even though this is unsustainable and draining.  Learning from their experiences and employing strategies to create more inclusive institutional environments would have positive impacts not only for undocumented youth but for other marginalized youth as well.

In our study, we examine the mental well-being impacts of undocumented youth transitioning into higher education in the Netherlands. Against the backdrop of intensified immigration debates—where immigrants are increasingly depicted as economic burdens, security risks, or threats to national identity (Duszczyk et al., 2020; Klaus, 2017; Rydgren, 2017)— undocumented students navigate complex educational and legal landscapes.  In the Netherlands, this includes accessing higher education through the Covenant agreement in Amsterdam and the Hague.  Through this program, young people can obtain student visas and pay the local/EU tuition rate to attend MBO, HBO, and WO institutions.  Undocumented youth face unique challenges as they transition from supportive school environments into work and higher education where restrictive policies limit their abilities to make choices in their lives (Abrego, 2011; Terriquez, 2015).

The analysis draws on three interrelated concepts: belonging, mental well-being, and resilience. Belonging is recognized as a fundamental human need that underpins emotional stability and identity formation (Allen & Bowles, 2012; Arslan, 2018; Rodríguez, 2012). For undocumented youth, legal liminality and cultural exclusion exacerbate feelings of isolation, thereby putting pressure on mental well-being (Correa-Velez et al., 2010; van der Ent, 2024).

In the face of marginalization, undocumented youth exhibit tremendous amounts of resilience.  Marginalized students often lack access to supportive services, forcing them to rely on individual resilience strategies like cognitive reframing, emotional regulation, and identity negotiation (Lehmiller, 2012; Romero et al., 2014). These individual strategies are insufficient to counter systemic barriers such as poverty, discrimination, racism, and xenophobia, perpetuating chronic stress for undocumented youth (Bulut et al., 2019; Marks et al., 2020; Vasquez, 2022). Institutional and community-level interventions are necessary to expand resilience beyond the individual and allow undocumented youth to thrive as they transition to adulthood (Raymond et al, 2018; Marks et al, 2020; Fisher and Buckner, 2018).

The results below include data from the Youth Leadership and Resilience (YL&R) from November 2022-July 2023 and the subsequent co-creative research group from July 2023 to July 2024.  The project employed a co-creative research model involving undocumented and formerly undocumented youth in the Netherlands as collaborators and paid researchers. Data were collected through interviews, non-traditional focus groups, and observational fieldwork with undocumented youth acting as both informants and researchers. We used AtlasTI to code qualitative data and identified three key themes, discussed below.