Youth &Society, Ahead of Print.
The immigrant political incorporation scholarship tends to stress the positive role that schools play in integrating undocumented Latinx youth. Yet, the racialization in school literature indicates that school is often a disempowering place for students of color. This study helps to explain this divergence. It draws from a case study of a struggling high school undergoing state-led reform in a new immigrant destination and analyzes data from school ethnography and student interviews. Deploying the concept of “critical bureaucratic incorporation,” this study explores how school reforms emphasizing high-stakes testing affected the students’ political incorporation. The findings show how these reforms disproportionately negatively affected the Latinx students, nearly all of whom were undocumented immigrants. The results suggest that future studies of immigrant political incorporation consider the case of struggling schools and insights from average students; and that the racialization in school literature address how school reforms affect students beyond academic achievement outcomes.