race&ethnicity 2-3 pages paper

341

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 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

http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1111%2Faeq.12339&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2020-04-14

Anthropology & Education Quarterly Volume 51, 2020342

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 : 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

Nájera Undocumented Student Safe Space 343

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

Anthropology & Education Quarterly Volume 51, 2020344

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,

Nájera Undocumented Student Safe Space 345

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.

Anthropology & Education Quarterly Volume 51, 2020346

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.”

Nájera Undocumented Student Safe Space 347

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

Anthropology & Education Quarterly Volume 51, 2020348

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 …