UC PromISE aims to expand our understanding of how immigration policies disrupt the educational experiences and wellbeing of college students from immigrant families. We recognize that undocumented students experience legal vulnerability as immigration-related laws and policies compromise their educational, economic, and wellbeing outcomes. Additionally, the U.S. citizen children of undocumented immigrants are subject to multigenerational punishment, wherein they share in the risks and limitations associated with their parents’ undocumented status. Our research explores these wide-reaching effects of immigration policy with the goal of informing policies and practices that will advance equity and inclusion for affected students.

In Spring 2020, we conducted a survey of 2,742 University of California (UC) undergraduate students with immigrant parents with a focus on three groups: undocumented immigrant students, U.S. citizen students with undocumented parents, and U.S. citizen students whose parents have lawful immigration status. We aimed to understand the extent to which immigration-related policies produce inequalities in the educational and wellbeing outcomes of students who are undocumented or members of mixed-status families.

In collaboration with the Undocumented Student Equity Project, we simultaneously fielded our survey with California State University (CSU) undocumented students. We recognized the need to understand undocumented student experiences beyond the University of California because it is unique in its system-wide dedication of resources to establish and expand undocumented student services on all its campuses. We aimed to document the extent to which undocumented status disrupts education and wellbeing, and understand how individual student actions, student support services, and institutional context may help reduce inequalities.

 

More about the survey data

We fielded our survey from March to June 2020 with four groups of students. At the nine UC campuses, we surveyed students from three groups: 1) undocumented students (n=667), 2) U.S.-born citizen students with at least one undocumented parent (n=643), and 3) U.S.-born citizen students with legal immigrant parents (n=1,431). Focusing on eight CSU campuses, we surveyed 610 undocumented students.

Primary outcome variables for academic performance include GPA, incomplete courses, academic engagement, post-graduate preparation, and immigration-related academic distractions. Primary outcome variables for well-being include stress, self-rated health, psychological distress, food insecurity, and help-seeking behavior. Secondary measures include economic instability, deportation threats and exposure, access to resources and opportunities, social exclusion and isolation, feelings about current immigration policy and rhetoric, concerns about the future, and self and family demographic measures.

You can access the UC version of the survey here and the CSU version of the survey here.