PhD Candidate in the Berkeley Graduate School of Education
Martha Ortega Mendoza is a PhD Candidate in the Berkeley Graduate School of Education. Stemming from her own experiences navigating the beginning of her graduate education as an undocumented student, her dissertation seeks to uplift the academic, social, and financial experiences of undocumented Latinx/a/o/ graduate students attending the University of California. Through her research, Martha seeks to understand how institutions can attract, retain, and graduate undocumented graduate students. Martha’s doctoral work has been made possible by different research centers at the University of California, (UC Berkeley) including the Center for Race and Gender, Greater Good Science Center, and the Institute for the Study of Societal Issues. Martha holds a master’s degree in education from UC Berkeley and a bachelor’s degree in Latin American & Latino Studies from UC Santa Cruz. In her spare time, Martha loves visiting new restaurants and sharing meals with her husband.
Within the undocumented student literature, we have limited insights into the trajectories of undocumented graduate students. To date, only a handful of studies have examined the experiences of undocumented students enrolled in professional programs, including law school (Escudero et al., 2019; Freeman & Valdivia, 2021; Kennedy, 2014; Lee, 2020; Olivas, 2020). Similarly, only a few studies have examined the experiences of students enrolled in research-focused doctoral programs (Lara, 2014; Lara & Nava, 2018; Landgrave, 2021; Montiel et al., 2020). Collectively, these studies have been pivotal in furthering the undocumented student scholarship. However, it is noteworthy to highlight that some of these studies have not interviewed undocumented graduate students directly (Escudero et al., 2019; Lara, 2014; Lara & Nava, 2018; Montiel et al., 2020).
To fill in this critical gap in the literature, my dissertation centers on the voices and experiences of undocumented graduate students through the use and analysis of students’ testimonios. Specifically, it draws upon 44 testimonio interviews with 22 undocumented graduate students enrolled in one of the 10 University of California (UC) campuses. By doing so, this dissertation examines the educational experiences and trajectories of undocumented graduate students enrolled in professional and doctoral research-focused programs within the (UC) system and how they are shaped by their field of study, campus, and ever-shifting immigration statuses. I further analyze how the UC system’s commitments toward its undocumented student population have been operationalized and examine the commitments that remain unfulfilled. While the undocumented student college population is remarkably diverse in terms of ethnic backgrounds (Teranishi et al., 2015), this dissertation focuses on a specific subpopulation within the broader undocumented student community—undocumented Latinx/a/o graduate students within the UC system. Here, I use the Latinx/a/o terms interchangeably to refer to individuals who are foreign-born and who have ancestry to a Spanish-speaking Latin American country in Central and South America, and the Caribbean (García Bedolla, & Hosam, 2021).
To examine the complicated and shifting landscape that undocumented graduate students experience within the UC system, my dissertation draws upon “liminal legality” (Menjívar, 2006). Liminal legality (Menjívar, 2006) allows scholars to move beyond antiquated black-and-white conceptualizations of immigration status that once rendered individuals strictly either documented or undocumented. Liminal legality has been used to examine how federal-level policies have granted individuals an in-between immigration status (Cebulko, 2014; Hamilton et al., 2020; Morales Hernandez, & Enriquez, 2021; Roth, 2019). I extend liminal legality (Menjívar, 2006) to examine the role of federal, state, and institutional level policies.