Stephen Ruszczyk

After teaching English as a Second Language and training teachers in Brooklyn for several years, Stephen Ruszczyk is now a Ph.D. Candidate in Sociology at the CUNY Graduate Center. His research interests include immigrants, citizenship, organizations, education, and adolescence.

His dissertation project examines the experiences of inclusion and exclusion of undocumented youth in Paris and New York as they turn 18. Using ethnographic data with two dozen undocumented youth and their families in New York and Paris, he tracks and map their exclusion and inclusion in the local context. These case studies, contextualized in a rich analysis of the construction of illegal residence in each city, make a crucial micro-macro link. The different orientations of state and civil society actors in each city strongly shape the trajectories of undocumented youth as they become adults.