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The Scheme Game: How DACA Recipients Navigate Barriers to Higher Education

College-bound recipients of DACA—a 2012 US administrative policy officially titled Consideration for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals—face a series of administrative and financial barriers in pursuing postsecondary education. These barriers often include a complicated process for in-state tuition consideration, as well as exclusion from the majority of educational subsidies. This research sheds new light on DACA students’ own understanding of their financial exclusions and the often ingenious methods they use to finance higher education. The research employs critical race theory/LatCrit frameworks to examine the structural systems of exclusion within educational policies and the corresponding measures taken by DACA recipient students in Ohio to overcome them. Participants’ testimonios highlight their own resilience in the face of multiple obstacles, dispel notions of meritocracy in higher education, and educate institutional agents about funding inequities in an effort to rectify them. This work finds, in response to the barriers they face, many DACA recipients in Ohio find a variety of unconventional ways to navigate a complex admissions process and secure a means of paying entirely out of pocket for their tuition. Participants in this longitudinal, qualitative research refer to these navigational strategies as participating in “the scheme game.” The scheme game consists of 3 overlapping practices: “grindin’,” “hustlin’,” and “schemin’.” Rooted in hip-hop, these terms originally refer to the ways Black, Brown, and immigrant communities navigate the barriers of a formal economy and participate in an informal economy to financially sustain themselves. Additionally, the research introduces the scheme game as a new epistemological perspective from which to understand the measures some DACA students take to afford a higher education.