race&ethnicity 2-3 pages paper

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Creating Safe Space for Undocumented Students: Building on Politically Unstable Ground Jennifer r. náJera Department of Ethnic Studies, University of California, Riverside

This article presents a case study that examines how undocumented students created a safe space for themselves on their college campus and how that space was ultimately institutionalized by the university. It also considers the politically vulnerable position of undocumented youth in such endeavors. Drawing from Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems model, the analysis provided here examines the micro and macro contexts that facilitate and impede the development of safe space for undocumented students. [higher education, immigration, Latino/as, safe space, undocumented students]

In early February 2017, Immigration and Customs Enforcement conducted a week of immigration raids throughout the country, including communities in Southern California (Rubin et al. 2017). Among these was the city of San Bernardino, located just twelve miles north of the University of California at Riverside. Though the raids ostensibly targeted undocumented immigrants with criminal records, people with no criminal records were also detained, and reverberations of the immigration sweep were felt throughout the community. In the days following the raids, the program coordinator for the office of Undocumented Student Programs at UC Riverside, a young woman who is employed with DACA, disseminated a statement from the University of California’s office of Immigrant Legal Services, which contained local resources for people who were detained. She included in her email a message to her students stating that despite the “frightening and uncertain time,” her office would “continue to be available to support [them] and [their] campus communities,” noting two upcoming workshops: Know Your Rights and Immigration Law Information for Families.

During a moment of hostility toward U.S. immigrant communities, especially the un- documented, the office of Undocumented Student Programs on the UC Riverside cam- pus is a critically needed safe space for undocumented students. It is a space, however, that has solely existed since 2015. While studies about safe space on college campuses have generally focused on students of color, this paper considers the development of safe space for undocumented students, a racialized group whose political position renders them particularly vulnerable. Using Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems model as a crit- ical framework, this article examines how micro contexts and macro contexts affect the development of safe space on a college campus for undocumented students. Within this framework, the college campus is a micro context with its own unique culture, but it is also nested within larger macro contexts that affect its development. This paper qualita- tively shows how the interplay among activists, the university, public policy, and ideol- ogy (micro and macro contexts) affected the development of safe space for undocumented young people at one college campus.

Drawing from field work conducted at the University of California, Riverside, a large, racially diverse public university in Southern California, I show how student advocacy in conjunction with new, pro-immigrant state policies were key to the creation of safe space on campus in the early 2000s. Key to this analysis is understanding how stability and

Anthropology & Education Quarterly, Vol. 51, Issue 3, pp. 341–358, ISSN 0161-7761, online ISSN 1548-1492. © 2020 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved. DOI: 10.1111/aeq.12339

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change in macro and micro contexts over time shift student perceptions of safe spaces. This study shows that when ideologies and policies toward immigrants were positive, safe spaces evolved and grew such that undocumented students felt more inclusion on campus. On the other hand, during anti-immigrant moments, such as the one ushered in by the current presidential administration, feelings of “safety” on campus diminish, even with inclusive campus initiatives and policies. This begs the question of whether safe space can ever truly exist for undocumented students.

Review of Literature: Safe Space on College Campuses

There is scant literature about safe spaces for undocumented students on college and university campuses. The most robust analysis, which I mention below, is written by Suarez-Orozco and her colleagues using data from the UndocuScholars project (Suarez- Orozco et al. 2015; Teranishi et al. 2015). For this reason, I situate this research question within the scholarship about safe spaces on college campuses for students of color, partic- ularly Latinx students.

Much of the literature points to the ongoing need for safe spaces on college campuses for students of color. While many colleges and universities profess the value of diversity, students of color on these campuses regularly face negative racial campus climates rang- ing from institutional neglect to racial micro and macro aggressions (Harper and Hurtado 2007; Muñoz and Maldonado 2012; Suarez-Orozco et al. 2015; Yosso et al. 2009). Scholars note that students often forge “safe spaces” or “counter spaces” (Yosso et al. 2009) in re- sponse to experiences of being marginalized on their campuses. Suárez Orozco and her colleagues add that for undocumented students, safe spaces “provide opportunities to connect with other undocumented students, identify educator allies, and find informa- tion and resources related to their status” (2015, 433). The purpose of such safe spaces is for students to cultivate a sense of belonging (Rosaldo 1993; Yosso et al. 2009) and, for undocumented students in particular, to provide students a “refuge in an unsafe world” (Suarez-Orozco et al. 2015) and for them to become “active participants in civic life” (Seif 2009).

The literature reveals that safe spaces can be academic and/or social. Academic safe spaces include certain classes or even departments, such as Ethnic Studies or Gender and Sexuality Studies (Rosaldo 1993; Yosso 2006). These spaces help students to work out criti- cal academic ideas and problems in a trusted environment in order to more fully articulate their positions in mainstream classes (Rosaldo 1993). Yosso, Smith, Ceja, and Solórzano (2009) further explain that academic counter spaces are “sites where deficit notions of people of color can be challenged and where a positive collegiate racial climate can be established and maintained” (2009, 70). In this case, such spaces are not only “safe,” they might also be oppositional to the general culture of a campus.1 Yosso and her colleagues propose that social counter spaces, on the other hand, are sites where students can “vent frustrations and cultivate friendships with people who share many of their experiences” (2009, 677). They note that social counter spaces and academic counter spaces are not mu- tually exclusive and, in fact, often reciprocally constitute each other. For undocumented students, a third type of safe space is politicized space (Seif 2009), whereby gatherings are not merely social, they are also used to organize civic engagement and advocacy on behalf of the migrant community.

Scholars have also written specifically about the need for institutionalized safe space for students of color and for undocumented students in particular. Mission statements about diversity and inclusion are often more prevalent than campus policies and trainings

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that support diverse students (Golash Boza and Valdez 2018; Harper and Hurtado 2007). Though the institutions themselves might not be hostile, they are often marked by benign neglect (Pérez Huber 2009; Suárez Orozco et al. 2015). Undocumented students can be wary of trusting university staff and administration with information about their legal status (Pérez Huber and Malagon 2007; Muñoz and Maldonado 2012), and staff are not al- ways aware of policies that could help their undocumented student population (Negrón- Gonzales 2017; Suárez Orozco et al. 2015). Participants in the national study by Suárez Orozco and colleagues called for much more institutional support, akin to what LGBTQ students have achieved on many college campuses—designated space on campus and student affairs officers trained to attend to the specific needs of their community (2015). Furthermore, their study revealed three major areas to guide institutions of higher educa- tion to become “undocufriendly”—(1) understand undocumented students and educate service providers on campus; (2) provide help in the form of services, scholarships, and safe spaces; and (3) publicly endorse undocumented students (2015, 449).

The scholarship on safe space for undocumented students is limited but emerging. This article addresses some of the gaps in the literature by introducing a temporal aspect to the study of safe space on college campuses, examining how it develops over time. Furthermore, while many studies about safe space focus on university policies, this study focuses on macro contexts such as public policy as well as micro contexts such as the role of student activists. The case of safe space for undocumented students in particular is unique because of the way that these students are enmeshed in often volatile debates about immigration policy.

Theorizing the Development of Safe Space

In order to theorize the development of safe space for undocumented students on a college campus, I draw from Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems model (Bronfenbrenner and Morris 2006). Although this model was designed to understand the different struc- tures and forces that shape an individual’s development, I mobilize it to examine the development of a school’s campus culture, shifts in immigration policy, changing atti- tudes toward undocumented students, and the impact of these on undocumented stu- dent perceptions of safe space. Bronfenbrenner’s model allows us to see how schools are positioned within larger structural forces, such as ideology, industry, media, and, perhaps mostly importantly at this juncture, politics. A dynamic systems model—one that is con- stantly changing—elucidates a path to better understand the evolution and destabiliza- tion of safe space for undocumented students on college campuses.

Bronfenbrenner proposes that there are several micro and macro systems that shape an individual’s life, and for immigrants, these systems function in specific ways. Macro systems include abstract national ideologies, media messaging, and public policy (2006). Each of these systems is subject to change over time. For example, over the past fifty years, national ideologies about immigration have shifted from generally open after the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which lifted restrictive quotas, to the post- September 11th war on terror, which ushered in an era of heightened suspicion and fear toward immigrants. While these represent two oppositional poles in the development of a U.S. national ideology toward immigrants, this shift has in no way occurred in a linear fashion. In his book, Covering Immigration, Leo Chavez (2001) details how social, legal, and economic conditions shape public attitudes toward immigrants at given historical moments. While Chavez points to the media as a litmus test for national attitudes to- ward immigration, media can also be understood as constitutive of ideology. Stuart Hall

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argues that, “the media’s main sphere of operations is the production and transformation of ideologies” (2000, 272). In this way, media not only reflects ideology; it shapes ideology. News outlets, which range from ultra-conservative to leftist, interpret and shape the way that the nation views immigrants. Within this field of representation, undocumented im- migrants in particular have generally been cast in negative ways (Chavez 2001).2 Finally, while the last major federal immigration reform that included a form of amnesty occurred in 1996, with President Bill Clinton’s IIRIRA, a number of state-level policies have altered living conditions for immigrants residing in particular states—for better and worse. In California, undocumented immigrants are eligible for driver’s licenses and financial aid for college. Georgia, on the other hand, bans students from attending its top five state colleges and universities, and even criminalizes the transport of undocumented people (e.g., giving them a ride to work or school). State policies acutely affect the lives of undoc- umented people in a number of realms, ranging from access to education to work oppor- tunities to health outcomes (Ábrego 2008; Ayón and Becerra 2013).

Each of these ideological and political macro systems interacts with micro systems, which are the localized and often more intimate structures of young immigrants’ lives. Micro systems include family, school, church, and other community spaces that shape the development of an individual (Bronfenbrenner and Morris 2006). In this paper, I focus on a college campus, which Bronfenbrenner would refer to as a “nested context.” This does not mean that schools are protected from outside forces. On the contrary, they are af- fected by each of the larger macro systems in the model. Ideology, media, and public pol- icy all shape the culture of schools. Additionally, schools develop unique cultures based on student, faculty, and staff demographics, attitudes, university policies, and the local context. Because the university is in many ways a microcosm of society (Suarez-Orozco et al. 2015, 432), it reflects the national ambivalence about undocumented young people in the United States. On the other hand, particularities about schools can sometimes shield it from national hostilities. For example, in their case study about undocumented stu- dent experiences at a Hispanic Serving Institution in Central California, Golash Boza and Valdez (2018) found that undocumented students felt a stronger sense of belonging, less stigma, and a more positive educational experience overall.

The University of California, Riverside, a four-year public university located in the Inland Empire region of Southern California, is also a Hispanic Serving Institution. Beyond being an HSI, however, during the time of this study UCR had the highest per- centage of Latinx students and the second highest number of Black students in the UC system (Wilcox 2017). Indeed, the most recent university statistics reveal that 86% of the student population at UCR are students of color.3 A recent study by Garibay et al. (2016) revealed that U.S. born students of color are more likely to have positive views about undocumented student access to higher education. As a professor at UCR for the past decade, I have observed that most students hold benign to neutral attitudes toward im- migrant communities. However, student attitudes toward undocumented immigrants are more varied, with even students of immigrant families questioning why others could not come to the United States “the right way.” Overall, however, undocumented students at UCR have been more likely to face micro aggressions rather than any overt forms of anti-immigrant sentiment on campus.4

The local context also matters. In 2006, Riverside County entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that allowed local law enforcement to be trained and deputized to enforce federal immigration law.5 The MOU was ostensibly to protect Riverside County from “criminal” immigrants,

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but it created a culture of anxiety among immigrant families whether or not they had a criminal record (Gonzales 2014). These new local immigration policies were in addition to the Border Patrol presence already in the region. As part of the El Centro sector of the U.S. Border Patrol, Riverside County is considered to be a border region. In fact, a Border Patrol field office was located less than two miles from the UC Riverside campus from 1967 until 2012 (City News Service 2012), and in 2009 immigrant rights activists from the Justice for Immigrants Coalition staged a protest outside the office to protest the office’s “overzealous” enforcement practices (ibid). The intensification of policing and patrolling of undocumented immigrants in the Inland region during the mid-2000s undoubtedly increased anxieties about deportation not just in the community but also for students coming to the region to attend college from other parts of California.

Given these macro and micro systems, how does safe space emerge on a particular college campus? The dynamic nature of Bronfenbrenner’s model, or what he calls “devel- opment,” offers a framework to better understand this phenomenon. He defines devel- opment as “stability and change in the biopsychological characteristics of human beings over the life course and across generations” (Bronfenbrenner and Morris 2006, 796). If the ecological systems model leads to the development of an individual, it is because the system itself goes through processes of stability and change. In this paper, I focus on the development of one of the nested contexts of the model—schools—and I ask the question: How does safe space evolve on a college campus? I argue that the development of safe space occurs unevenly and that it is affected by individuals, groups, and the institution itself. I also consider how shifting ideology and political macro contexts can both enable and disrupt safe space on a college campus at different times.

Methodology

This paper is part of a larger ethnographic project that explores the education and activism of members of the undocumented student advocacy group at UC Riverside, PODER. I became interested in the specific issue of safe space after observing how student activists successfully built and advocated for resources and physical space on campus be- ginning in the fall of 2013 and then witnessing a shift in the meaning of those gains after the presidential election in the fall of 2016. For the purposes of this article, I draw from oral history interviews that I conducted with some of the founding and first members of PODER as well as field work with the group between 2014 and 2017.

During the period of this study, I was one of six U.S.-born, Latina professors on the UCR campus. My racial and gendered identity coupled with the fact that I teach sub- ject matter in Ethnic Studies that relates to immigration, education, and feminism leads many students to approach and confide in me, including Latinx undocumented students and especially women. From this vantage point, I watched how a few undocumented students and allies were able to organize and create a support group for themselves through PODER. When I began the research for this project, I decided to formalize the early knowledge I had about these students through oral history interviews. Interviews with former members of the group helped to elucidate some of their early struggles, their connections with other undocumented students in California, and their initial goals for the group. While in my analysis I was able to corroborate many of the events recounted in these interviews, as historian Alessandro Portelli reminds us, oral history narrative anal- ysis “tells us less about events than about their meaning” (1998, 67, emphasis his), and one of the abiding concerns in my narrative analysis is how the “meanings” of undocumented student identities and their subsequent feelings of safety have shifted over time.

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I also draw from some of the field work that I conducted with PODER between 2013 and 2016. During this time period, I engaged in participant observation, including at- tending the group’s weekly meetings as well as the various events that they sponsor and attend. While participant observation is a common anthropological research method, my approach aligns with activist research in the field, which Shannon Speed defines as “the overt commitment to an engagement with our research subjects that is directed toward a shared political goal” (2006, 71). In this case, the goal is for increased rights and resources for undocumented students on campus as well as the broader struggle for migrant rights in the U.S. public sphere. For this article, I draw from field work I con- ducted in winter 2014 when I participated in meetings between members of PODER and the vice chancellor of Student Affairs (VCSA) and his staff as they created a budget for financial and resources for undocumented students on campus. In her reflection on “mil- itant anthropology,” Nancy Scheper-Hughes (1995) writes that political commitments often limit anthropologists’ ability to maintain the confidences of people on two sides of a particular issue. While I hoped that the VCSA and his staff would give me their per- spectives on undocumented student issues on campus, I also wanted to be clear that my presence there was as a faculty advocate who was present to support student demands. Analysis of my field work thus focuses on student perspectives, especially with regard to their feelings of safety and security on campus. Finally, I highlight field work from meetings and demonstrations after the November 2016 election and in September 2017 after the federal government announced the termination of the DACA program. In these spaces, I was at once sympathizer and ally, and when I was at demonstrations, I was not there solely to observe but also to add my voice to the protests. In these scenarios, the analysis that I provide is from the perspective of an ethnographer who is not only sympathetic but also politically engaged in the movement for migrant justice alongside her interlocutors.

Using the tools of oral history and anthropology, I have been able to glean rich nar- ratives and field accounts, which I analyze not only to document students’ struggles to create safe space on their college campus between 2008 and 2017 but also to more deeply understand the significance and emotional impact of feeling safe on campus. Finally, I draw from the Bronfenbrenner systems model to illuminate how micro and macro con- texts affect the development of safe space for undocumented students on this particular college campus. I do not use the framework to provide a formulaic analysis, per se, but rather as a way to understand how changes in those contexts can potentially create the conditions for feelings of safety as well as to destabilize gains by undocumented students to forge safe space.

Creating a Safe Space for Undocumented Students

In the mid-2000s, there were only between 50–60 undocumented students on campus, and they were not an organized or visible presence. Undocumented undergraduates thus often sought help and connections through the office of Chicano Student Programs and through the political student organization, MEChA.6 Elias,7 who transferred to UC Riverside from a community college in Southern California, connected with staff from the office of Chicano Student Programs (CSP). He recalls finding out for the first time that there were other students in his same situation on campus.

It must have been either Estella or Elena [CSP staff members] that said, “You know what? There’s two or three undocumented students that are meeting after MEChA.”

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I was like, “Oh, shoot. I’ll go join them.”

I only went to MEChA because I knew there were three other undocumented students, and I wanted to know how they were doing.8

Elias is one of several people who recall the office of Chicano Student Programs as one of the first places they went to find out about support and resources in the mid-2000s. Although he was not necessarily interested in joining MEChA, he was interested in connecting with other students who were also undocumented. When he states that he “wanted to know how they were doing,” he is likely referring to how they were managing the stresses of being undocumented and a full-time student. Given his own experiences, such a group of people might help him with ideas about how to better navigate his own situation.

Adela likewise recalls that upon arriving on campus, she approached the office of Chicano Student Programs and spoke to the director. She states,

I went to UC Riverside and I remember going to the Chicano Student Programs with Estella. And I [said], “I know there’s nothing for undocumented students. But I’m an AB540 student,9 and I …” I don’t exactly remember exactly about that conversation, but I just wanted to introduce myself to Estella. And she told me, “Actually, there is someone that wants to start something regarding AB540 students, and it would be good if you talked with her.”10

Adela initially had difficulty connecting with the woman to whom Estella had referred her. Sol was extremely involved in MEChA and nearing the end of her undergraduate education.11 Adela continues, “Finally after like a month or two—cause, you know, I was kind of persistent—…I talked to Sol and we decided to start [a] group for us.”12 Adela’s persistence in trying to connect with Sol and helping to form a group to support undoc- umented students is significant. She had matriculated from a high school in Los Angeles and was unfamiliar with the Riverside area. Friends and family from Los Angeles warned her that Riverside was not a safe place for undocumented people. Specifically, because Adela would be commuting to school without a license, she was afraid of being pulled over because she fit a type of racial profile. Adela was determined to connect with local undocumented students to create a space where she could feel safe.

Adela characterizes PODER in its early days as a social space where undocumented students could share the aspects of their lives that were particular to their legal status. She recounts:

It started just … being a circle, just [to] talk… We had plans but …our main focus was on school and that’s what we were there for…because at that moment everyone was struggling. I mean, that was my situation… I remember Elias not having a car for a while, and he had a lot of prob- lems with his car, you know. We all have. He commuted from home, too. We were all in the same situation. You know, trying to just survive in school, just stay in school. Just trying our best to stay in school.13

Her description of the group and its initial goal most closely aligns with Yosso and her colleagues’ characterization of social counter spaces—sites where students could “vent frustrations and cultivate friendships with people who share many of their experiences” (Yosso et al. 2009, 677). Adela underscores the similarities that members of the group had during the first years of the group. Financial struggles meant living with family and commuting to school with, at times, unreliable means of transportation. The PODER “cir- cle” was a place where students could talk about their struggles and support each other

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as they navigated their way toward college graduation. Meetings also created a space where they could feel safe from fears relating to their status and, in fact, find ways to sup- port each other through the anxieties of trying to attain a college degree while also being undocumented.14

PODER provided a critical safe space for undocumented undergraduates in the mid- 2000s, and it began to partner with other student organizations that were hosting com- munity events, such as MEChA. Student leaders in PODER soon saw the opportunity to host their own community events, especially with regard to creating pathways for other undocumented young people to the university. Elias recalls:

We ended up having a little parent conference with 75 to 125, that range of folks in this little auditorium. We had bundles to give to the parents because it was an evening event. [Two undoc- umented women] shared their stories, and then their parents were also there to share a little bit about their experience, how to finance their education. We had [an attorney] who is still active in that community and has deep roots with not only MEChA, but UCR and CSP and the Latino Alumni Association, the Chicano Alumni Association…We had three foci: funding your educa- tion, know your rights, and then I think the last one was always parent support or how to support a student.15

The group mobilized their small safe space on campus to the community. The foci that Elias mentions—especially the first two— are significant to the creation of more “safety” in their community. Prior to the passage of the California Dream Act,16 financing a col- lege education was one of the greatest barriers for undocumented students to attend a four-year college or university. Providing first-hand information about funding their ed- ucation not only created a pathway for a younger generation of undocumented students, it also alerted them and their families to the fact that there were other students without legal status already making their way through the university. The presence of a trusted community attorney who could inform students and families about the rights that they had—even as undocumented immigrants—was meant to increase a sense of security in the community, despite the ever-present fear of deportation.

Over the next four years, the group became more active and connected to undocu- mented student organizations in other California colleges and universities. Upon seeing the support that students received at other institutions, they decided to approach the UC Riverside administration about better supporting undocumented students on their cam- pus. Araceli recalls,

I was part of that student body that went to [the vice chancellor of Student Affairs] and said, hey, this is what we need…Riverside was so behind, and UC Santa Barbara had their own resource center, they had [a point] person, and that’s what we wanted. [On] the list that we had I think that having the center was like our number one…Because of … the California Dream Act, that means that students were going to start applying more. There was just going to be this flow of students coming in.17 That is like, okay, we have to do something about it.18

PODER students were emboldened by the passage of the California Dream Act (2011), which in many ways served as a state-wide endorsement of the educational endeavors of undocumented students. They were also increasingly aware of the presence of undoc- umented students at other colleges and universities, and the kinds of resources and sup- port that they received. Based on this public endorsement and information, they created a list of demands for the vice chancellor of Student Affairs. At their meeting with him, they were able to show him the actions other universities were taking to support their

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undocumented student populations. While they recognized the need for a staff person to serve as a point person for questions and unique concerns (Contreras 2009; Pérez and Cortez 2011), their priority was the allocation of a space on campus for undocumented students—a university-designated safe space.

The events that I have highlighted in this section illustrate the evolution of safe space for undocumented students at UC Riverside, largely forged through their own initiative and then bolstered by state policy. Through the lens of Bronfenbrenner’s systems model, it is apparent how undocumented students—in the nested context of UCR and in the even more deeply nested Office of Chicano Student Programs and the student organization, MEChA—cautiously began to connect with each other in the mid-2000s. Within those micro contexts, we can see how they forged a small safe space for themselves through the establishment of the group PODER. From there, student organizers worked to expand safe pathways for other students to come to the university through community outreach, extending to another micro context, the local Riverside community. Finally, we see student efforts within those micro contexts bolstered by a shift in two macro contexts—ideology and policy—in the state of California. Specifically, the passage of the California DREAM Act in the fall of 2011 helped students to gain the attention of university administrators. The emergence of this state-wide policy helped UCR undocumented students to convince the university that they needed greater institutional support and resources. This policy also signaled a shift in another macro context—ideology about immigrants in the state of California. Over the span of four years, undocumented student fear subsided so much that they were able to broaden claims for space that would be safe for them and for future generations of students.

Institutionalization of Safe Space for Undocumented Students

The conversations that undocumented student activists began in 2011 with the vice chancellor of Student Affairs (VCSA) were a first step toward creating institutionalized safe space on campus, but progress was slow. The major desires of the group were for the vice chancellor to (1) hire a staff person who could be the point person for undocumented student issues, ranging from financial aid to mental health needs to career services and counseling and (2) to designate an actual space on campus for undocumented students. Both of these demands required substantial resources from the VCSA office. Smaller and more immediate demands were for a university-affiliated website that would direct un- documented students to resources and for an ally training for faculty and staff to become familiar with undocumented issues. The vice chancellor’s office was working in conjunc- tion with students and staff on the latter two demands, but it was not until 2013–2015 that a series of initiatives in the University of California system began to rapidly change the campus culture for undocumented students.

The shift began in the summer of 2013, when the UC Regents approved the appoint- ment of Janet Napolitano as the new president of the UC system. Almost immediately, news of her appointment triggered student protests on several campuses with undocu- mented student leaders citing the record number of deportations she oversaw in her pre- vious position as director of Homeland Security (Asimov 2013). Just three months later, in her first significant speech as the president of the UC system, Napolitano pledged five million dollars over three years to UC students without legal documentation. This money was to be used for financial aid, student advising, and resource centers (Guzman-Lopez 2013). Though the gesture was met with ambivalence by student activists, the money made a significant impact on each campus in terms of financial aid and support services.

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Furthermore, the establishment of the UC Immigrant Legal Services Center, also made possible with funds from the UC Office of the President (UCOP), contributed to the legal stability of students. If we understand safe space for undocumented students as related to “undocufriendly” campus culture, these UCOP initiatives provided resources for staff training and programming that would benefit undocumented students. At UC Riverside, the UCOP funding and public endorsement enabled the two most important goals of the activists who had approached the Vice Chancellor in 2011—the employment of a student affairs officer who would be trained in the particular needs of undocumented students and a designated space on campus that would serve both as a resource center and as a safe space.

Members of PODER knew that they needed a staff person to connect them to resources on campus and to advocate for them. Drawing from the UCOP funds and matching funds from the UCR vice chancellor’s office, the university hired a recent alumna and former student activist for the position of “Program Coordinator” for the Office of Undocumented Student Programs. As a former member of PODER, the new program coordinator spear- headed many of the events that the group held on campus, and she was also connected and active with the larger network of UC undocumented activist youth as well as local labor activists. As someone who was undocumented herself, she brought an insider per- spective, having experienced the university as an undocumented student before the avail- ability of resources that addressed the needs of such students. Furthermore, she remained intimately connected to the life experiences and struggles of immigrant communities. Her effectiveness as a program coordinator also stemmed from her ability to draw from these experiences in order to create connections between her undocumented students and other staff on campus, especially in offices such as Financial Aid, Counseling and Psychological Services, the Career Center, and the newly established UC Legal Services Center. This has not only included referrals, but also specific programming, such as workshops with staff from the office of Financial Aid regarding how to apply for the California Dream Act and talking circles hosted by a counselor from Counseling and Psychological Services.

While the program coordinator created space for undocumented students to have bet- ter access to the resources of the university and nurtured a sense of inclusion, it was also important for them to have a designated space on campus. The Office of the Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs initially wanted to permanently house the undocumented student program coordinator in the office of Chicano Student Programs (CSP). The logic was that CSP and its staff had taken the lead in serving undocumented students in pre- vious years. PODER students, however, argued that non-Latinx undocumented students might not feel comfortable entering a space that was ethnic specific. Ultimately, univer- sity officials agreed to find a space for an office of Undocumented Student Programs. In early spring 2015, a year and a half after Napolitano pledged support to undocumented students and four years after students first approached the vice chancellor of Student Affairs about the lack of resources for the on campus, the office of Undocumented Student Programs (USP) opened its doors to students. Two months later, USP hosted an open house celebration, which attracted hundreds of students as well as the vice chancellor of Student Affairs, several members of his staff, and the UCR Chancellor, Kim Wilcox. Nearly a quarter of the respondents in the Suarez-Orozco study respondents highlighted the importance of “administrators to recognize, embrace, and support undocumented students as part of the campus community” (454) in order to create an undocufriendly campus culture. To that end, both the Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs and Chancellor

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Wilcox spoke publicly at the open house, affirming the place of undocumented students at UC Riverside.

Ultimately, beginning in 2011, but especially after Napolitano’s appointment as the president of the University in California in 2013, UC Riverside began to actively respond to undocumented students and to create safe spaces for them on campus. The clearest manifestation of this space was the establishment of the Office of Undocumented Student Programs. However, the program coordinator was also instrumental in creating safe spaces for undocumented students in other university departments. By serving as a li- aison and an advocate for students, she has cultivated a greater sense of inclusion for students on campus. While these were the two primary demands of the PODER activists who approached the vice chancellor of Student Affairs in 2011, an additional initiative by the UC Office of the President has also positively affected students’ sense of safety on campus—the establishment of the UC Immigrant Legal Services Center.19

Housed at the UC Davis School of Law and made possible with funds from the UC Office of the President, the UC Immigrant Legal Services Center provides legal assistance to undocumented UC students and their families. Lawyers from the center are assigned to each of the UC campuses. At its inception in 2015, a Southern California lawyer from UCILSC would come to Riverside to run legal workshops and conduct legal intakes.20 Workshops included topics such as Know Your Rights and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). Additionally, the lawyer would conduct legal intakes for students. These might be general reviews of to see about possibilities for relief or offering advice and representation about legal matters (e.g., a housing dispute). Having legal represen- tation on campus certainly represents the institutionalization of safe space; however, undocumented students are also deeply affected by what happens in their home commu- nities to their families. For this reason, it is significant that attorneys from UCILSC serve UC students and their immediate family members. The security that comes with access to an immigration attorney undoubtedly augments students’ feelings of safety on and off campus.

Drawing from Bronfenbrenner’s systems model, we can understand this marked and rapid shift in campus culture for undocumented students because of shifting micro and macro contexts. Although the emergence of safe space was the result of members of PODER advocating on behalf of the undocumented student population in the nested context of UC Riverside, it was also the result of changes in the macro contexts of pol- icy and ideology. During this same time period, Barack Obama initiated the DACA pro- gram (2012), offering relief to the undocumented young people who were brought to the country as children. The DACA program served to cement the image of undocumented young people as “blameless” Dreamers (Author 2015), despite the discomfort many of them felt with such a representation, especially given that it placed the “blame” for their immigration status on parents. In conjunction with this shift in ideology about undoc- umented young people, there was also a change in immigration enforcement policy. In 2011, John Morton, then the director of Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE), declared schools one of a number of “sensitive locations” that should not be targeted for enforcement. The memos that Morton issued about sensitive locations marked the begin- ning of a period of decreased immigration enforcement during President Obama’s second term (Chisti et al. 2017). The Morton memos illustrate the interactions between macro and micro contexts in Bronfenbrenner’s systems model. These federal guidelines for immigra- tion enforcement policy directly affected local contexts, such as schools. By recommending

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that schools not be targeted for enforcement, the Morton memos created a deeper sense of safety for undocumented college students, including those at UC Riverside.

Thus far, I have traced a trajectory of increased safe space for undocumented students on the UC Riverside campus. Beginning with the micro-level contexts such as student organizations and moving toward macro-level contexts such as educational and immi- gration policies as well as political ideology, the dynamic nature of the systems model is apparent. In the state of California, pressure from immigrant activists successfully changed ideologies about young undocumented migrants such that that the state legis- lature passed a financial aid bill for such students to have greater access to higher educa- tion. Then, also because of political pressure, the president of the University of California system implemented a series of initiatives to provide financial support and services to UC undocumented students. These policies, in addition to DACA, led to the institutionaliza- tion of safe spaces at UC Riverside in a relatively short period of time. The development of safe space and undocufriendly policies enabled students to access more of the universi- ty’s resources and to feel a greater sense of inclusion. While gains during this time period were generally positive—moving toward greater safe space and inclusion—the dynamic nature of the model does not necessarily ensure a progressive movement toward pro- immigrant ideology and policy. This became deeply apparent after the 2016 presidential election.

The Erosion of Safe Space

On November 8, 2016, Donald Trump was elected president of the United States. For over a year prior to his election, he campaigned on a platform that was anti-immigrant— promising to build a wall between the United States and Mexico; characterizing Mexican immigrants as drug dealers, criminals, and rapists; and announcing that he would ban migration from Muslim-majority countries (Washington Post Staff 2015). His election was an affront to many undocumented young people and their families. In terms of an ecolog- ical systems model, macro and meso systems had seemingly been moving toward ideolo- gies, media representation, and policies that were friendly toward undocumented young people, especially in California. The presidential election, however, signaled a negative shift in the culture’s ideology with ramifications for federal immigration policy. Though pro-immigrant state laws remained intact, Trump’s election destabilized much of the se- curity that students have begun to feel on campus at UC Riverside.

Six days after the election, the leadership of PODER sent an email to members of their listserv with the following message:

As you all know post-election season has brought many uncertainties. And now more now than ever we will continue to create a safe space and educate our community. That being said, we invite you to join us as we grie[ve], heal, and build together… We will be hosting a talking circle moderated by a campus counselor.

The meeting that evening was held in a small space. Couches and chairs were pushed to- gether to form a circle. Students were generally somber as the counselor asked a series of questions. One young woman expressed disbelief that people viewed her and her family as criminals. Many conveyed uncertainty about their future in the country. While some parents were making contingency plans, many students noted that they had no memories of Mexico. They wondered what would it be like to return to a place that was completely unfamiliar to them. Younger siblings asked if they would go to Mexico with their parents

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or stay with their older, college-going siblings in the event of deportation or repatriation. Many wondered about the future of DACA and what would happen if the program was eliminated. They would not be able to get a job after graduation. Despite the organizing efforts of PODER to continue their role in providing a safe space for undocumented stu- dents and the presence of a university-employed licensed therapist to guide them through their anxieties, these students’ sense of safety was clearly destabilized.

Two weeks later, UC President Janet Napolitano issued a statement to the ten UC campuses, recognizing the anxiety of undocumented students “that possible changes in federal immigration law and enforcement priorities may interrupt their studies and jeop- ardize their safety and that of their families.” To that end Napolitano—in consultation with a UC Undocumented Task Force—generated a Statement of Principles in support of undocumented students. This provided a framework for how to proceed if the UC’s “commitments to inclusion and non-discrimination” were tested by the incoming admin- istration. Key among these principles was that the UC would not change its admission policy to exclude undocumented students; UC campuses would not provide informa- tion about undocumented students to the federal government without a warrant, sub- poena, or court order; and UC police would not be authorized to cooperate with federal immigration authorities or to act as immigration authorities on their own accord. UCR Chancellor Kim Wilcox disseminated the Napolitano letter to the campus, noting that “President Napolitano’s letter is wholly consistent with [the UCR] campus’ core values of inclusion and non-discrimination, and further reflects [UCR’s] unwavering commitment to creating an environment in which all students, staff, and faculty have the opportunity to learn and thrive, regardless of their background.” This type of public endorsement of students whose legal status (or that of their parents) render them vulnerable during this new political moment should not be understated; it is a key component of creating a campus that feels safe for undocumented students (Suarez-Orozco et al. 2015). However, a statement of principles for the system and the values of the UCR campus do not guaran- tee legal protections to undocumented students. Without such protections when students and their families face the threat of detention and deportation, can safe space truly exist on a college campus?

Just a month after highly publicized Southern California raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), I received an email from a former student whose friend’s father had been detained in an immigration raid in East Los Angeles. The student was writing to see if I could connect her friend to any pro bono legal resources for her family, as they were upset and unsure of how to proceed. I was relieved to be able to refer her to UC Immigrant Legal Services, where I knew that she would be able to receive free and confidential legal services from licensed immigration attorneys, one of the benefits of the institutionalization of undocumented student programs. Whereas the Morton memos de- clared schools among a number of “sensitive locations” where officers were not supposed to carry out enforcement actions, students’ home communities have always been accept- able sites for immigration raids.21 Despite a range of safe spaces and inclusionary poli- cies on campus, undocumented students continue to fear for the safety of their families (Teranishi et al. 2015). The threat of deportation makes it difficult for students to conceive of any space as safe.

Finally, on September 5, 2017, just nine months into the new administration, the U.S. Attorney General announced that it would terminate the DACA program, effectively eliminating temporary legal status and work permits for nearly 800,000 undocumented young people in the United States (Krishnakumar et al. 2017). In the days preceding the

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announcement, local immigration activists anticipated it with plans for demonstrations. Although the school year had yet to begin for UC Riverside, PODER leadership sent an email to its members, encouraging them to attend a press conference hosted by the Inland Empire Immigrant Youth Coalition (IEIYC) in downtown Riverside. At five o’clock, on a hot late summer afternoon, current and former members of PODER gathered with local immigrant activists and allies on the steps in front of the First Congregational Church of Riverside. Originally, a protest was planned for early the following week, but upon hearing that the president would likely announce an end to the DACA program sooner, community leaders organized this press conference within thirty-six hours. About fifty people, including many immigrant youth, but also parents, small children, union mem- bers, and faith leaders arrived to show their support. Members of the IEIYC led the press conference with statements in English and Spanish, inviting other young people to share their stories. While some were students at UC Riverside, others had come from the local state college and community colleges. They all spoke about the value of DACA, but they also encouraged the crowd to continue fighting for members of the immigrant commu- nity who did not benefit from DACA’s protections.

A few days later, many of the same people re-convened along with a much larger crowd to protest when Attorney General Jeff Sessions officially announced the end to the DACA program. Over a hundred activists and allies convened in front of the church again but proceeded to march through downtown to City Hall, chanting: Undocumented! Unafraid! and No papers, no fear. Immigrants are welcome here. Marchers—from elders in the community to young children—carried signs with messages such as Love and Dignity Beyond Bars and Borders, ICE Out of IE, and DACA Ends but Our Fight Continues. Speakers noted that there were 60,000 youth in the Inland Empire who had DACA but that the fight for migrant justice had to include those who did not qualify for the program. One of the IEIYC youth commented on the microphone: “Let us use our parents as an example of resilience. After Tuesday is another beginning to another long fight. We will not stop until there is justice for everyone.”

Despite outward displays of solidarity and strength, in private conversations with student activists in the weeks and months since the DACA decision, they confide that they do feel afraid. They fear deportation for themselves, but especially for their parents. Gonzales and Chavez (2012) write about the myriad fears undocumented young people and families face without legal status in the United States. While this fear is immobilizing for some migrants, for others it serves as the impetus for activism. Being politically active in marches, phone banking, and other forms of organizing helps undocumented young people to feel like they are being proactive, but it does not take the fear away. The current presidential administration—by revoking of DACA and extending ICE’s arm of immigra- tion enforcement—has unsettled the spaces that they once felt were safe.

Conclusion

This article demonstrates how safe space emerged for undocumented students at the University of California, Riverside. Drawing from Brofenbrenner’s ecological systems model, it analyzed the macro and micro contexts that made possible the creation of safe space for undocumented students on a college campus. At the micro level, qualitative interviews reveal how such space would not have been possible without the vision and the desires of undocumented students in the pre-DACA early 2000s. They were able to create safe space for themselves on campus through the creation of a small student or- ganization where they could share information about resources and provide emotional

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support to each other. They then extended their reach to the local community in order to provide pathways to college for other youth without legal status and were ultimately em- boldened to confront university administrators about lack of support for undocumented students on campus. This ethnography also reveals that university-sanctioned and insti- tutionalized safe space would not have been possible without the financial support and public endorsement of university administrators, from the UCR campus and, especially, the UC Office of the President. On a macro level, California state policies that grant un- documented students financial aid and the Obama-era DACA program further opened the possibilities for space for undocumented students on campus. Bronfenbrenner’s eco- logical systems model helps us to understand how all of these micro and macro systems interact with each other to create the conditions for safe space on a college campus.

The systems model also alerts us to the dynamic nature of macro and micro contexts such that safe space on a college campus can be destabilized. While this article primarily presents the evolution of safe space for undocumented students in terms of greater inclu- sivity, it also signals how changes in national ideology, messages about immigrants, and policy can and do negatively affect safe space, even after it has been institutionalized by the university. So, even while California maintains pro-immigrant state policies such as the California Dream Act and UCR maintains its office of Undocumented Student Programs and funding for programming, anti-immigrant messages and policy proposals from the president of the United States coupled with the actions of emboldened Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers generate fear in immigrant communities on college cam- puses. Undocumented students’ sense of safety after the Trump election is now unsettled. This is not to say that institutionalized support and safe spaces for such student are now useless; it does, however, signal how tenuous safe space can be for a politically vulnerable group like the undocumented.

When Elias and Adela began their studies at UC Riverside, DACA did not exist, nor did the California Dream Act. Nevertheless, their actions of meeting every week, reach- ing out to the community, and demanding that the administration hear their concerns helped to create safe space for future generations of undocumented students. Likewise, undocumented young people, veteran migrant activists, and allies around the country built their own local movements in their own “nested” contexts. Their combined grass- roots actions led to macro-level policy wins like DACA, in-state tuition, and financial aid bills in many states around the country. As that young woman at the rally noted, they are now at the beginning of another long fight. Students at UC Riverside and other local high schools and colleges continue to organize and advocate for their community. While col- leges and universities can and should find ways to support their undocumented student population, safe space for such students cannot truly exist until there is comprehensive immigration reform.

Jennifer R. Nájera is an Associate professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of California at Riverside. ([email protected])

Notes

1.Hurtado (1992) and Yosso, Smith, Ceja, and Solórzano (2009) offer two key studies of racial campus climate. Sylvia Hurtado introduced the idea of campus racial climate in the early 1990s, fo- cusing on racial conflict on college campuses and institutional responses that were often inadequate

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to address the problem. In 2009, Yosso, Smith, Ceja, and Solórzano critically expanded the analysis of racial campus climate using a CRT framework and focusing on daily micro aggressions that Black students faced on their college and university campuses.

2.Undocumented students, often referred to as “Dreamers” are the exception to negative media representation. While they are often cast as good and blameless in the discourse about unauthorized migration, such characterizations cast their parents as well as immigrants who were adults when they crossed the border as “bad” and often criminal.

3.https://ucrto day.ucr.edu/49833 4.Building on work by psychiatrist Chester Pierce, Solorzano et al define racial microaggressions

as “unconscious and subtle forms of racism” (Solorzano et al. 2000). Here, I extend the definition to apply to anti-immigrant sentiment, which is also linked to racism.

5.This MOU was made possible by Section 287g of the Immigration and Nationality Act. 6.MEChA, Movimien to Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan, is a student organization that emerged

out of a convening of Chi cano/a youth activists at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1969. There are currently hundreds of chapters across the United States. The primary activities of the group are educational, political, and social on behalf of the Chicanx community.

7.All names of undocumented students in this paper have been changed to pseudonyms to pro- tect their privacy.

8.Interview with author, March 25, 2016. 9.Assembly Bill 540 (or AB 540) is a California state bill that passed in 2001 that enables students

who have attended a California high school for three or more years to pay in-state tuition. For many years, undocumented students would refer to themselves as “AB 540 students.”

10.Interview with author, July 16, 2016. 11.In her research in Washington state, Contreras (2009) found that many undocumented stu-

dents gravitated toward MEChA as a safe and supportive space on campus. 12.Interview with author, July 16, 2016. 13.Ibid. 14.The national Undocuscholars study (Teranishi et al. 2015) reveals that undocumented students

experience significantly higher levels of anxiety than their documented counterparts. In their study of community college students, Pérez and Cortez (2011) found, however, that undocumented stu- dents find a number of positive coping mechanisms for anxiety.

15.Interview with author, March 25, 2016. 16.The California DREAM Act, passed in 2011, refers to two bills—Assembly Bill 130 and

Assembly Bill 131—that make undocumented California students who fulfill certain requirements eligible for state aid and private scholarships.

17.The number of undocumented students at UC Riverside did increase significantly after the California DREAM Act was passed. However, Negrón Gonzales (2017) found that community col- lege students who lived with high levels of poverty were not able to access the California DREAM Act at the same levels.

18.Interview with author, July 10, 2015. 19.The center was original called the “Undocumented Legal Services Center.” 20.In early 2017, UC Riverside, received its own immigration attorney through the UC Immigrant

Legal Services Center. 21.While ICE has not conducted enforcement actions in schools, reports of immigration officers

making arrests near schools have been filed, such as the high-profile case in Los Angeles when a father was arrested after dropping his daughter off at school (see Castillo 2017).

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