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VOICE Summer Series: The (Re)Writing Migration Stories Project
23 Plays10 months ago
In this episode, we explore a powerful VOICE project that uses art and dialogue to empower immigration-impacted communities to share their stories. Guests Dr. Laura Enriquez, Giovanna Itzel and Breana Figueroa Perez discuss their approach to fostering reflection, connection and understanding through "artivism." They explore how creative expression can bridge divides, challenge perceptions and ignite social change, and offer listeners inspiration to explore their own narratives.
Episode Resources:
- 2025 VOICE Recipients — UC National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement
- (Re)writing Migration Stories — Undocumented Student Equity Project
Recommended
Transcript
Role of Free Speech in Democracy
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I think what we need to do is explain how our principles of free speech, free inquiry, will help serve the cause of justice.
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The First Amendment, the constitutional freedom of speech and freedom of conscience that is the bulwark of our democracy.
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There was a passion in what was being said, affirming this, what people consider a sacred constitutional right, freedom of speech and freedom of association.
Introduction to 'Speech Matters' Podcast
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From the UC National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement, this is Speech Matters, a podcast about expression, engagement, and democratic learning in higher education.
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I'm Michelle Deutschman, the Center's Executive Director and your host.
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We are continuing with our special Summer Voice Series, focusing on a different project in each episode.
Voice Initiative and UC Community Projects
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As a reminder, the Center's Valuing Open and Inclusive Conversation and Engagement Initiative, Voice for Short, awards up to $5,000 to UC students, staff, and faculty who are interested in conducting research or coordinating programs and activities that further the Center's
Rewriting Migration Stories Project Overview
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mission.
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Today, we are joined by the team behind the Rewriting Migration Stories Project.
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The project has created an educational exhibit and coordinated workshops to support reflection on U.S. immigration policy and its impact on undocumented and mixed status communities.
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First started at UC Irvine, the Voice Award helped the project to expand and host exhibits and workshops at other UCs, including Merced and San Diego.
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These exhibits and public discussions draw on lived experiences of immigration, students, staff,
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faculty, and community members to promote a nuanced discourse on immigration policy.
Effects of Trump's Immigration Policies
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Discussions of immigration are particularly timely given the Trump administration's aggressive stance on this issue.
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Most notably, on his first day in office, Trump issued an executive order attempting to end birthright citizenship, a constitutional precept for more than 160 years.
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Birthright citizenship is what grants citizenship to individuals born within the United States, regardless of the citizenship of the child's parents.
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Additionally, we have seen increases in arrests and raids, but decreases in the affordance of due process to those that are detained.
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As we've discussed in earlier episodes, the administration has also targeted international students across the country based on their viewpoints on certain political issues.
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But before we dive in to the VOICE project, let's turn to Class Notes, a look at what's making headlines.
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I want to kick off today's class notes with a tidbit of positive news.
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Despite the disparaging and negative narrative that the current administration has been painting about higher education, two polls released last week indicated that confidence and satisfaction in higher education are on the rise, increasing for the first time in a decade.
Public Confidence in Higher Education
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New America's annual Varying Degrees Survey found that 42% of both Democrats and Republicans reported that higher education is fine as it is, compared to 36% the previous year.
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These findings are similar to a separate poll conducted by Gallup in partnership with the Lumina Foundation.
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While confidence was up by six percentage points, this finding is still a significant decrease from the confidence high of 60% found 10 years ago.
Supreme Court Ruling on Education Department
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While trust in higher education may be up, the ability of the Department of Education to effectively do its work of administering college loans, tracking student achievement, and enforcing civil rights laws in schools is down.
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That's due to the Supreme Court's end-of-term decision,
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allowing the Trump administration to reduce the Education Department's workforce by one third.
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Dismantling the Department of Education, which the president cannot do legally without the authority of Congress, is a key element of the president's plan to drastically downsize the federal government.
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This Supreme Court decision did not garner as much attention as one would expect.
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in large part because it was on the emergency or shadow docket.
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This case, like many on the shadow docket, are typically not argued before the court since they're usually on an expedited timetable and are typically issued without explanation.
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The court was split along ideological lines six to three.
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While no rationale was included for the decision, Justice Sotomayor authored a blistering dissent that was joined by the two other liberal justices, Ketanji Brown Jackson and Kagan, writing that this decision hands the executive the power to repeal statutes by firing all those necessary to carry them out and that the threat to our constitution's separation of powers is grave.
Texas Law on College Protests
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At the state level, legislatures continue to exert undue influence on expression on campus.
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In 2019, Texas lawmakers passed a law aimed at eliminating free speech zones in order to increase the ability of students, staff, and faculty to protest on campus.
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Many of these same legislators did a 180 when they struck that provision as part of the passage of SB 2972 last month and instead gave colleges the power to determine where protests can take place and if the public is permitted to demonstrate on campus.
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Most troubling, perhaps, is the law's exceptionally broad definition of expressive activities and the restriction on these activities in the last two weeks of each semester, as well as every day between 10 p.m.
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and 8 a.m.
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The effect could be prohibiting students from doing something as basic as sitting together outside wearing clothing with political slogans.
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There is no doubt that this law will be used as a model for other states as we move toward the start of the academic year.
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Now back to today's
Meet the Migration Stories Project Team
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guests.
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We are so lucky to be joined by the three team members that formed the Rewriting Migration Stories Project.
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Dr. Lauren Riquez is an associate professor of Chicano Latino Studies and the director of the Center for Liberation, Anti-Racism and Belonging at UC Irvine.
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Her research focuses on the educational, political, and social experiences of undocumented young adults and members of mixed-status families.
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She is the author of the award-winning book of Love and Papers, How Immigration Policy Affects Romance and Families, in which she explores how immigration policies constrain the dating, marriage, and parenting experiences of undocumented young adults and limit intergenerational mobility within mixed-status families.
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Dr. Enriquez is principal investigator of the Undocumented Student Equity Project, the UC collaborative to promote immigrant and student equity, and the rewriting Migration Stories Project.
Origins of the Migration Stories Project
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Giovanna Itzel is a current doctoral student in political science at UC Irvine.
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As a one and a half gen immigrant and product of SoCal's public education system, she is invested in educational spaces that foster awareness, belonging, and politicization for Latinx undocumented and immigration impacted communities.
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The Rewriting Migration Stories project has allowed her to reimagine how this can exist amidst hostile university environments, anti-immigrant extremism, and policy debates dominating national discourse.
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Through art-making and conversations, she has found the possibility of radical learning practices for students and youth.
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Brianna Guadalupe Figueroa Perez is a fifth-year undergraduate student at UC Irvine,
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She is majoring in Criminology and Chicano Latino Studies, and I'm excited to say she is also currently interning with us at the Center.
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Woof!
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Your bios are amazing.
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Welcome to you three.
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We're so happy to have you on the podcast.
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Thanks for having us.
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So with that, Dr. Enriquez, can we start with you?
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Can you share with us about your voice project?
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What is it?
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What inspired you to create these exhibits?
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Of course.
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So I launched the Rewriting Migration Stories Project in fall 2023.
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So it's been almost two years now.
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And the project started as a small seminar class that I taught to undergrad students and graduate students.
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So Brianna and Giovanna were both in it.
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And it was really focused on students who were interested in thinking deeply about how immigration policy has shaped our lives and our sense of identity and belonging.
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So there were 23 students who were impacted by immigration policy in some way, maybe being undocumented themselves or having currently or formerly undocumented parents.
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And together we sought to learn about the experiences of exclusionary immigration policy and then really use this knowledge to examine and contextualize our own narratives of growing up in families and communities with ties to undocumented migration.
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So we used a variety of art formats, right?
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Testimonial, autoethnography, art making as sort of critical forms of knowledge production to make sense of our own experiences.
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And I think the unique part of this class was that students could then participate in a co-curricular activity where they could continue their autoethnographic research by traveling to their country of origin over winter break following the class.
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So it ended up that 17 students ended up traveling to Mexico, most for the first time in over a decade, sometimes longer.
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We spent what, I mean, everybody spent their own amount of time, but one to three weeks continuing their auto-ethnographic research and thinking about how traveling to and spending time with family in Mexico and visiting their country of origin really shifted feelings of belonging and understandings of illegality and mobility.
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And then what happened after that, right, is that 11 of these initial student participants wanted to continue thinking about these things.
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And that's really how the project continued and evolved again as we as a group started to continue to engage in art making and platicas, which in Spanish means chats, to develop an art exhibit documenting key themes from our autoethnographic research.
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So cool.
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It struck us that the title of the project is Rewriting Migration Stories.
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So can you share a little bit about what the title is?
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Why the rewriting?
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Yeah, that's a great question.
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So I think a core component of the project has always been to conduct autoethnographic fieldwork.
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I mean, this is where participants write and respond to prompts to theorize from their own experiences.
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So the project was going to require writing about migration stories, and that's kind of where it came from.
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But then I ended up putting re in parentheses before writing.
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Right.
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So that becomes rewriting also because I wanted to highlight the power we have to rewrite our stories as we make sense of them and retell them in the context of immigration policies and these larger structural barriers.
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So the goal wasn't just to document, but also to transform how we see and understand our stories.
Art and Identity in Immigration Narratives
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We want to dive into some of the details of the actual art and the platicas.
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So can you share what a bit more about the exhibit and what you were hoping visitors would gain from visiting?
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Yeah, of course.
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So our exhibit uses primarily visual art and poetry to explore two key questions.
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The first being, what wounds has the border inflicted on us as members of immigration impact communities?
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And the second, how does immobility across borders impact our identities and feelings of home?
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When we began working on the first iteration of the exhibit, three core themes emerged, home, identity, and borders.
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For example, Brianna and I worked together on unpacking the theme of home,
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We tried to capture how borders and immigration policies have introduced uncertainty into our lives, leading some of us to redefine home as fluid, mobile concept that travels with us regardless of where in the world we may be.
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So we aim to reflect on how our immigration stories have shaped our understanding and experience of what home means.
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And through experiences of separation and loss, our perceptions of home and the memories tied to it vary significantly.
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So we found ourselves trying to recreate a dining room table.
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A dinner table represents people coming together to share a meal.
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However, details of the table setting hint at divisions and pain from legal violence.
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A ceramic liquor bottle and the poem Padre Caído, which translates to fallen father, is an homage to people who find difficulty in coping with the hardships of being undocumented in the U.S. The poem is inspired by Brianna's grandfather, who suffered from alcoholism and could not work in the U.S. His story is a testament to how immigration policy negatively affects family dynamics.
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And so next to this plate,
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setting rests a mug entangled by a beaded rosary.
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And this is to represent those who can only hope and pray for change, right?
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The poem, Ramas Marchitas, translates to withered branches, was also written for strained mother-daughter relationships due to border policies.
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And these individual stories come together to show the impact of immigration policy on families.
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Another set of panels focused on identity to unpack the many ways that immigration policy informs our identity formation.
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One side touches on the positives through kites that participants decorated after traveling to their home or ancestral country.
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And this depicted what participants wanted to leave behind and grow beyond their post-return.
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The other side wrestled with the difficulties that participants face when forming their identities.
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The artwork displayed discussed the labels and the more negative perceptions that participants have of themselves or that have been placed upon them, right?
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Through collage work, tejidos, and poetry, we're able to gain insight then into the pain that many individuals face due to immigration policies.
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And I can go on and on.
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There are a lot more panels,
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But you can see from these two examples that the exhibit is really trying to bring visitors into our world as immigration impacted people.
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We want them to see the complexities and far reaching consequences of immigration policy.
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And as a team, we decided that we wanted to focus our energy on making sure that immigration impacted students and community members saw our exhibit and could feel seen and empowered.
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Thank you so much for sharing all those details.
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It's almost like I'm seeing the art behind my eyelids right now.
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And, you know, it just makes me think about whether as you were constructing this idea of home, whether there was a role for campus in that, you know, and not everyone lives on campus, but certainly, you know, we spend a lot of time at school.
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And I wondered whether as you were thinking about these things as students, whether the
00:14:59
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the idea of campus as a home, whether that was part of the discussion or not really?
00:15:05
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I don't think so, only because for many of us at the current moment or within the context of like all these things happening, campus wasn't providing that sense of safety or, you know, that sense of
00:15:21
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yes, the sense of safety that home brings.
00:15:25
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So I don't think that we, Brianna can share more if she'd like, but I don't think that we were thinking of campus as a home at the time, seeing that like a lot of like visceral violence was happening on campus at the time.
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I guess when it comes to home on campus, it was more the idea of like pockets of home on the campus,
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that the violence immigration impacted individuals experience on campus leads them to seek those ideas of home.
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And that's where like that conversation begins of like, what really is home?
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Is it really a place or is it something that you can carry with you to any campus?
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Yeah, it seems to me that you all have found a home of sorts on campus through this group of folks who are working on this project.
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So thank you for sharing that.
00:16:21
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Giovanna, I know that dialogue was a key part of this experience.
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So I wondered if you could share some of the themes that arose during the conversations that you were talking about having during the exhibits.
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Yeah, so right off the bat, the themes of exclusion and belonging come to mind.
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I recall participants sharing with us how rare, if at all, they have opportunities at their current campuses to participate in activities like ours, activities that for many of them, they hadn't engaged in
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At least at a classroom setting, since they were like in primary, secondary school, right?
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For many of them, like drawing or engaging in collaging wasn't something that they did as part of an educational activity.
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So it was really...
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really cool for them to participate in things like that.
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But they also shared a sense of how they felt they were seen in that moment.
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And along those lines, I think connection is another theme.
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Some participants shared a feeling of connectedness with us based on our mutual understanding of shared experiences as immigration impacted individuals or even allies that were there supporting their loved ones too, right?
00:17:35
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I'm curious, were there moments where participants voiced a perspective about immigration policy that differed from yours or from others who were attending the workshop?
00:17:46
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So I think this was something we were concerned about going into the exhibit because we were setting it up in very public spaces on campuses.
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But it wasn't something that ever really materialized.
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So instead, people who saw the exhibit as we were setting it up and we were in the space really came to share their own stories with us or thanked us for sharing our stories.
00:18:08
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But there weren't really any moments where we were really debating or
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talking about immigration policy explicitly, it was really more just about our experiences of it.
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Yeah, and then when it came to our workshops, whether at UCI or other campuses, we were really intentional about opening the space with certain community expectations because we wanted to make sure that we were creating spaces where participants could safely share about their own experiences without any fear.
00:18:40
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We made it clear that the goal was to foster reflection and connection with others rather than discussing or debating specific policies.
00:18:48
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But because of the pre-established boundaries that we set, we found that those in attendance were more likely to share and participate in the conversations we were having.
00:18:57
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Yes, so we really wanted to focus on the human sides of people's experiences rather than politics.
00:19:03
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I think that was like really important for us.
00:19:05
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So our workshops were also designed to more broadly engage folks in thinking about belonging and identity in the context of exclusionary immigration policies.
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And then also like keep in mind, we only had an hour or two with the folks and
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We knew that it would be hard to cultivate the necessary trust that's really needed to dig deeply into immigration stories.
00:19:26
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So instead, we sought to build on themes from our exhibit that workshop participants could connect to in ways that were both physically and emotionally safe for them.
00:19:38
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Brianna, since I've had the pleasure of working with you so closely, I've heard you use the term artivism.
00:19:45
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So I wanted to ask you to talk about what artivism is and can you share its role in the Rewriting Migration Stories project?
00:19:56
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Yeah, so artivism is a fusion of the words art and activism, which describe like a creative yet strategic tool to advocate for social and or political change.
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So specifically to the rewriting migration stories project, we have used artivism to see how we can humanize and reclaim narratives of those impacted by immigration policies.
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We implemented this idea into our framework through different art mediums, as mentioned by Giovanna, like poetry, photo collages, drawings, and of course the exhibit panels as a whole.
00:20:31
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It is like platforming the experiences that sometimes cannot be simply put into words.
00:20:38
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Thanks for sharing.
00:20:39
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And can you talk about how you see the role of artivism in the realm of civic engagement more broadly?
00:20:47
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Well, like the creation and display of artivism can, we've seen that can promote civic engagement because it acts kind of like a bridge between people and political issues.
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The humanization that is done with artivism has the power to move people emotionally.
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And that is where we can see people are encouraged to interact.
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Those who interact with artivism are encouraged to take action in political advocacy.
00:21:13
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Dr. Enriquez, I want to turn to you.
00:21:16
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I'm curious about how you've seen the project grow as it has expanded to different campuses.
Project Expansion Across UC Campuses
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I know that it's been to three different campuses now.
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Have you noticed a difference in how communities on each campus have responded to the exhibit?
00:21:32
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Yeah, so we visited UC Merced and UC San Diego this past year.
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And we've also spoken with faculty and staff at Riverside, Berkeley and UCLA about bringing our exhibits there.
00:21:42
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And all of those planning conversations really made it clear that each campus's population of undocumented and immigration impacted students are unique, right?
00:21:51
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So at Merced, it was being in the Central Valley and the proximity to the agricultural industry.
00:21:57
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In San Diego, it was a threat of being close to the U.S.-Mexico border and having immigration enforcement visible in everyday life.
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And I think a lot of research has shown the impact of the local context on the experiences of undocumented immigrants, but we were really seeing it play out as we were planning and discussing our project with stakeholders at each campus.
00:22:17
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So it meant that at Irvine, you know, for example, students wanted spaces that were explicitly dedicated to immigration impacted people, and they saw it as a way to create a safe space, right?
00:22:27
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But at San Diego, the idea of labeling a vet as something for
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immigration impacted students was really scary for folks.
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And they were worried that the space could then become a target for immigration enforcement agents.
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So I think all of this really reinforced to us that each community has unique needs and concerns.
00:22:44
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And I think what worked really great at Irvine in some cases would need to be shifted in other campuses that really wasn't this one size fits all.
00:22:52
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We've really had to work through that in targeting our, developing our workshops in ways that targeted the specific needs of folks on each campus.
00:23:00
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I wondered if you could share something surprising that has resulted from these exhibits or from having these conversations.
00:23:08
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Something that came out of these projects that you were not expecting at all.
Art as a Medium for Immigration Experience
00:23:13
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So I learned that I can write poetry and I'm pretty good at making scrapbook pages.
00:23:18
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Oh, so fun.
00:23:20
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So, I mean, in all seriousness, though, I've been really impressed with the power of art making for helping us hold conversations about really heavy topics like immigration.
00:23:30
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There's so much emotion, right?
00:23:32
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Both happy and sad wrapped up into our migration stories.
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And art has been a really great way to process our experiences and build community with each other and sort of imagine a new way of being.
00:23:43
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People talk and share so much as they're making their art piece during a workshop.
00:23:47
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And it's great to see just how taking an hour to sit and make something, you know, leafing through a magazine or printing a few family pictures or cutting up paper borders and channeling your inner kindergartner with stickers and gems and glitter glue.
00:24:02
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All of these simple acts can help us pause long enough to reflect and make sense of our past and imagine a future.
00:24:10
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It always makes me think of how
00:24:13
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I swear I read somewhere that there was a mathematician who did all his best thinking peeling potatoes.
00:24:19
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It's like the action of doing something is like the best way to process.
00:24:24
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Yeah.
00:24:25
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For me, one of the things that shocked me the most, especially when I first started with the project, was the level of suppression when it came to like the experiences of violence and emotions.
00:24:36
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It was, I like to compare it to like opening Pandora's box and
00:24:40
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Like, as we've previously mentioned, immigration issues have been a topic since before Trump's administration.
00:24:47
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So the immigrant community consists of old and new generations carrying traumas that we are yet to heal from.
00:24:56
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And I saw this even with my own family.
00:24:58
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I thought that participating in this, I thought I would only unpack my own trauma, but then it resulted in me unpacking my parents and my grandparents' traumatic experiences due to immigration policies.
00:25:13
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Thank you for sharing, you know, about your experiences.
00:25:15
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And I wonder if you can talk about the importance of it drawing on those lived experiences of your own family and others.
00:25:25
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So I think that, especially in academia, that there's a hierarchical nature to it.
00:25:31
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And sometimes that can be isolating, especially when it comes to being impacted by social issues.
00:25:38
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So when we participate in this project with our own traumas, we see that others, either they have something similar or they're just there for support, like allyship.
00:25:51
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that creates sort of like a community and it like is able to reflect an equitable space so at the same time we're kind of undoing a lot of this like hierarchical systems that kind of prevent us from uniting that's why we we emphasize the importance of
00:26:10
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highlighting the experiences of everyone, including students, staff, and faculty.
00:26:16
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We don't put a limit on who can and cannot come to our workshops or our events.
00:26:21
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This allows for connections to grow that overall empower the immigrant community.
00:26:27
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So when this project was first created, we were living in a very different political environment vis-a-vis immigration.
Political Climate and Project Challenges
00:26:36
Speaker
And I wondered if today's climate of fear, intimidation, and the narrative that is being told about immigrants around this country, how that changes the role of your project in the discourse on campus.
00:26:53
Speaker
Yeah, so I think immigration policy has really taken a dark turn these past few months, right, especially with the ICE raids that have become pervasive across Southern California since June.
00:27:04
Speaker
And I think while our current moment is unique, it's not exactly new.
00:27:08
Speaker
So when I started this project, I was already operating under the impression that 2024 would usher in a second Trump administration.
00:27:15
Speaker
We were still seeing the effects of all the exclusionary policies from the first administration,
00:27:21
Speaker
And even if I think about my own history that I've unpacked as part of this project, right, California's anti-immigrant policies in the early 90s carried similar feelings of fear and intimidation.
00:27:32
Speaker
And these built on even older laws and policies that dehumanized migrants and separated families and enacted mass deportations.
00:27:39
Speaker
So I think we're in a moment that's part of a much longer history of excluding and attacking immigrants and their families.
00:27:46
Speaker
And that's why this project is so important, that it helps people contextualize immigration policies and consider how they have been affected by them.
00:27:54
Speaker
It just makes me think about how we try to take these policy debates out of everyday life and we try to separate them from the actual real personal impacts that they will have on people's lives and experiences.
00:28:10
Speaker
And when you see leaders across the country using dehumanizing language about people, it has an impact not just on the policy debates, but also on the personal issues.
00:28:22
Speaker
day-to-day lives of people in this country.
00:28:26
Speaker
So we have seen local events recently such as ice raids and protest responses in LA and across the country and across California especially.
00:28:37
Speaker
And I wondered if that has impacted the conversations that have come up during these projects or during these exhibits.
00:28:45
Speaker
Yeah, so the timing of the recent raids really overlapped with the academic year wrapping up at UCI.
00:28:52
Speaker
So there hasn't been much opportunity for us sort of as a project team to talk with folks as part of the project.
00:28:59
Speaker
But I think this moment has really driven home that we're entering a new historical moment.
00:29:05
Speaker
The immigration enforcement actions have never really looked like this in our part of Southern California in recent memory.
00:29:12
Speaker
So folks are really scared in a new kind of way.
00:29:15
Speaker
And I think that that renewed fear for one's own or family members physical safety is going to shape conversations moving forward.
00:29:24
Speaker
I think I'd like to also add that we're also processing everything in real time ourselves, and it has been really hard to both process and prepare for what our future conversations may be or look like, given that this issue, it no longer just hits close to home.
00:29:39
Speaker
It's literally hitting our actual homes and affecting our daily lives.
00:29:43
Speaker
So right now, I personally haven't had much time to think about the conversations we're going to be having with our communities in the future, because I, like the rest of our community, is in literal survival mode.
00:29:56
Speaker
This is kind of shifting gears, but looking ahead, I know that it's survival mode now, but this will obviously continue to impact the community in the future.
Future Expansion and Impact of the Project
00:30:10
Speaker
So I wondered what
00:30:11
Speaker
your aspirations for the future are for the project, whether you envision it growing and impacting the broader community or further impacting UC campuses and communities.
00:30:23
Speaker
I think we're still planning to take the exhibit to a few more UC campuses that we didn't get to last year, including UC Riverside in the upcoming fall.
00:30:33
Speaker
maybe also community space, but we also have decided to focus on our own campus, just thinking about our team's capacity as Brianna and other undergrad members are preparing for graduation.
00:30:45
Speaker
We really want to pause and rebuild our team and then determine how we want to grow.
00:30:51
Speaker
Yeah, current moment is certainly scary and overwhelming, but I'm hopeful that it's also an opportunity to build a coalition, to build a community, to educate those around us and to support everyone around us.
00:31:06
Speaker
So I wondered if you could share how staff and faculty who are listening can support undocumented students or those from mixed status households who are on their campuses.
00:31:19
Speaker
Yeah, I think faculty and staff have an important role to play.
00:31:23
Speaker
I think as a faculty member, I found that pausing to recognize the current moment, you know, within the context of the classroom and sharing resources is really important for signaling to students that you're approachable and you can be a resource.
00:31:37
Speaker
So for example, I and another faculty member in my department emailed our majors and minors once the raid started in LA to remind students of their access to free immigration legal services within the UC system, but also sending about information about resources,
00:31:53
Speaker
like things like the basic needs center and emergency grants that can be very helpful when students are managing financial insecurity, but also other ways, right?
00:32:00
Speaker
So offering grocery cards, help moving their stuff out of the dorms, right?
00:32:07
Speaker
Or storing their things in our garages until folks could feel comfortable driving around to pick up their things.
00:32:14
Speaker
So really thinking outside of the box as well as connecting to resources.
00:32:18
Speaker
And I think I would also encourage faculty to be flexible with deadlines.
00:32:23
Speaker
So, for example, my syllabus, I have a statement about how I provide extensions if students are struggling with any kind of unexpected situation, like a health emergency or a family emergency or an immigration related strain.
00:32:36
Speaker
I think being explicit about that with students and adding that to sort of our standard kind of statements about extensions and incompletes, you know, it can, can be really helpful in signaling that we're open to those conversations.
00:32:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:32:51
Speaker
It strikes me that, you know, it's one thing to kind of point students to resources, but it's another thing to be a resource yourself.
00:32:58
Speaker
And it sounds like Dr. Enrique, as you have been, uh,
00:33:02
Speaker
holding it down for a lot of students on your campus.
00:33:05
Speaker
So I'm sure they appreciate all the work that you've done.
00:33:09
Speaker
Before we wrap up, I'm curious if any of you have thoughts on how this project or a project such as this might be taken to different campuses or communities.
00:33:22
Speaker
I'm thinking especially campuses that might be less impacted by the issue of immigration.
00:33:30
Speaker
Any suggestions that you have to share?
Universal Connection in Immigration Projects
00:33:33
Speaker
I mean, I think that all campuses are impacted by immigration, right?
00:33:40
Speaker
Even if there's less conversation about it or fewer students, sometimes those are the spaces that need these conversations even more because they're not being talked about.
00:33:51
Speaker
Right.
00:33:51
Speaker
So I think and even if there's, you know, very few immigration impacted folks, I think there's still possibilities for folks to think about their connections to immigration.
00:34:00
Speaker
Right.
00:34:00
Speaker
So I do like a drawing immigration histories activity in my class.
00:34:05
Speaker
Everybody has an immigration history.
00:34:06
Speaker
It just might look different from what we think about as an immigration history.
00:34:10
Speaker
And I think that can be really important for drawing these connections and really humanizing migration.
00:34:15
Speaker
as a universal experience.
00:34:17
Speaker
But I think in terms of doing this, because our project is so cool and everybody's going to want to do it on their own campuses.
00:34:25
Speaker
Totally, totally.
00:34:27
Speaker
I would say, you know, first it's important to think about your capacity.
00:34:30
Speaker
You know, when I was talking about the project in the beginning, it just sort of happened and kept growing because of, you know, the need and what students wanted to do.
00:34:39
Speaker
And I think a lot of people would want to talk about these issues because they're so relevant right now.
00:34:43
Speaker
But I also think they're really sensitive.
00:34:45
Speaker
and they need to be carried out with care and intention and collaboration with community members.
00:34:49
Speaker
So it takes a lot of time and preparation if you're going to do it right.
00:34:52
Speaker
And I think it's really important to do it right.
00:34:55
Speaker
Right.
00:34:56
Speaker
And sometimes it's better to not do something than to do something badly.
00:35:02
Speaker
Yeah.
00:35:03
Speaker
I want to echo that.
00:35:04
Speaker
And also I think I'll add that it's really important that you are connected to folks on the ground.
00:35:10
Speaker
Right.
00:35:11
Speaker
And,
00:35:11
Speaker
In this case, that is to students directly impacted and get a sense of what their needs are given the current moment that we're in.
00:35:19
Speaker
Dr. Enriquez talked about this earlier.
00:35:22
Speaker
a bit, but if I learned anything this past year is that each campus has a unique environment.
00:35:27
Speaker
And for some students, support looks like what we've been doing, whereas for other students, it doesn't.
00:35:32
Speaker
So asking immigration impacted students directly what they need is a good starting point to figure out if you will even have the support that you need from the very community that you're looking to uplift.
00:35:43
Speaker
Otherwise, I think it won't matter if you have the capacity or not, because you're not going to be doing right by the folks that the work is intended to benefit.
00:35:52
Speaker
Thank you all for sharing.
00:35:54
Speaker
And it's been such a great conversation and I appreciate all the time that you have put into this project and to talking with us about it.
00:36:03
Speaker
And we like to end each episode by leaving our listeners with an action, something that they can get up after they're done listening to do.
00:36:11
Speaker
And I wondered if there are particular assignments or actions that you would encourage folks listening to take.
00:36:20
Speaker
Yeah, for me, one of my favorite activities that our team has done with several groups across campuses is creating a collage that reflects the ideas of home, kind of like what we have previously talked about.
00:36:32
Speaker
Many participants in the past when they create these collages include photos of their family members or actual places or even traditional foods.
00:36:43
Speaker
This activity results in like a visual art piece that serves as a reminder for the immigrant community that our belonging can be complex, but it is for sure certain that we do belong.
00:36:54
Speaker
I think I agree.
00:36:55
Speaker
Taking the time to sit and do a collage or an art piece on your own can be really powerful.
00:37:00
Speaker
And I would say, you know, just pick a topic or something that you're trying to process and pose a few questions to yourself about it and then get to art making.
00:37:08
Speaker
And that can be writing a poem or drawing or creating a collage with pictures and magazines.
00:37:14
Speaker
or even digitally in something like Canva, right?
00:37:17
Speaker
And I think bonus points for doing it with a friend or family member and talking about the question, the topic while you work, that can be a really great way to start to unpack some of these things and really think about art as a tool for making sense of your experiences.
00:37:34
Speaker
Oh, well, thank you so much for sharing that.
00:37:35
Speaker
I am
00:37:36
Speaker
So excited to buy some glitter, get down and dirty, make some art, hopefully have some good conversations during it.
00:37:45
Speaker
And, you know, I just thank you all so much for the time, for doing this work, for sharing about it with our listeners.
00:37:52
Speaker
I know it's really uplifting to hear about what folks are actually doing on campus towards building stronger, more diverse, robust communities and
00:38:04
Speaker
So thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us and good luck in the new academic year.
00:38:09
Speaker
Thanks for having us.
00:38:11
Speaker
And then listeners at UCI can look out for our workshops.
00:38:15
Speaker
We're planning to host a lot of crafting sessions.
00:38:17
Speaker
So if anyone's around campus, they can come hang out with us.
00:38:21
Speaker
Oh, awesome.
00:38:22
Speaker
What a good plug.
00:38:23
Speaker
Zot, zot, zot, right?
00:38:24
Speaker
I'm impressed.
00:38:25
Speaker
I'll have to practice my anteater.
00:38:27
Speaker
Awesome.
00:38:30
Speaker
Thank you all.
00:38:31
Speaker
Thanks again to our guests and also to our wonderful guest host, Melanie Zement.
00:38:36
Speaker
We'll be back next month to talk about viewpoint diversity in higher education with John Seals, a professor of American politics in the government department at Claremont McKenna College and the author of four books on the American right,
00:38:48
Speaker
including passing on the right conservative professors in the progressive university.
00:38:53
Speaker
We'll look forward to talking to you next time.