Leadership Team
We are a group of interdisciplinary scholars, organizers, and artists, drawing on cross-sector dialogue and community-led scholarship to identify and advocate for new possibilities for migrants in California and beyond. We center migrants’ perspectives, and most of our members come from immigrant families and work in long-term accompaniment with migrant communities in California and Mexico.
Principal Investigators
Abigail Andrews is a leader in community-action research critically analyzing US immigration enforcement and centering migrant advocacy. She has run more than 15 collaborative research projects in partnership with immigrants’ rights organizations in the U.S.-Mexico border region. She is also author of several books and articles on state violence, gender, and grassroots organizing among migrants from Mexico and Central America. Most of her research is done in large, collective teams with undergraduate students in the Mexican Migration Field Research Program, 95% of whom come from immigrant families. Abigail grew up in Massachusetts and has lived and worked in Latin America and with immigrants in California for over two decades.
Professor of Urban Studies and Planning and Director of the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies, UC San Diego
Stephanie L. Canizales has worked extensively on the migration and coming-of-age of unaccompanied children from Central America and Mexico in California and Texas. Throughout her research and writing, Stephanie explores how displacement and migration shape the everyday lives of children and their families, and how immigrant children and families navigate the constrained structures of opportunities in the US. Stephanie’s books, Sin Padres, Ni Papeles, and Everyday Futures, take on many of these issues from the perspective of unaccompanied children and teens. Born and raised in Los Angeles, California, Stephanie is the daughter of Salvadoran immigrants whose experiences growing up as unaccompanied youth in Los Angeles motivate her commitment to public scholarship.
Assistant Professor of Sociology and Director of the Berkeley Interdisciplinary Migration Initiative, UC Berkeley
Mirian Martinez-Aranda’s research examines immigration detention, surveillance, and the intersection of law, race, and ethnicity in immigrant communities. Her work explores how confinement affects social relationships, material conditions, and health outcomes; how immigration detention and surveillance creates lasting impacts on individuals and families; and how immigration enforcement reshapes community life. Through research collaborations, public scholarship, and advocacy, Martinez-Aranda supports both academic partners and immigrant communities navigating immigration detention.
Assistant Professor of Sociology, UC Irvine
Assistant Professor of Chicana/o Studies, UC Santa Barbara
Silvia Rodriguez Vega is an interdisciplinary scholar, community engaged writer, artist, and educational practitioner. Her research explores the ways anti-immigration policy impacts the lives of immigrant children through methodological tools centering participatory art and creative expression. Her book, Drawing Deportation: Art and Resistance among Immigrant Children, argues that immigrant children are not passive in the face of the challenges presented by U.S. anti-immigrant policies. Based on ten years of work with immigrant children in Arizona and California, Drawing Deportation gives readers a glimpse into the lives of immigrant children and their families. Silvia grew up undocumented in Phoenix, Arizona as part of a mixed-status family from Chihuahua, Mexico.
Postdoctoral Fellow
Carla Salazar Gonzalez
Carla Salazar Gonzalez earned her PhD in Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles in 2025. Her research examines how Central American asylum-seeking mothers, along with their attorneys and advocates, negotiate and are affected by US laws and policies on borders and asylum. She also examines the implications and consequences of restrictive immigration policies and laws. Her research draws on 14 months of participant observation at an immigrant-serving organization, Al Otro Lado, and 125 interviews with Honduran, Guatemalan, and Salvadoran mothers in Tijuana. She seeks to deepen understanding of the implications and consequences of border policies for immigrant populations and their families within and outside the U.S.
Postdoctoral Fellow, Reimagining Refuge Network
Partner Organizations
Al Otro Lado’s mission is to uplift immigrant communities on both sides of the border by defending the rights of immigrants, refugees, and people who have been deported against systemic injustices and fighting for all families that have been torn apart by unjust immigration laws. Al Otro Lado’s Border Rights Project provides legal orientation to refugees in Tijuana, Mexico, regarding the process to seek asylum in the United States. The project empowers refugees with information about how US asylum, policies and border enforcement practices may apply to them, including policies such as the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), family separation and prolonged incarceration in immigration detention centers.
Tijuana, Mexico
Los Angeles, California
CIJYA creates a space for intersectional, system-impacted undocumented and refugee immigrant youth across California with an emphasis on underserved and QTBIPOC communities. We organize through an abolitionist framework to close down detention centers and build up community power through providing holistic care, transforming communities, and cultivating leadership for liberation.
Berkeley, California
EBSC provides legal services, community organizing, and transformative education to support low-income immigrants and people fleeing violence and persecution.
Lynwood, California
New Voice Immigration Assistance Services is a religious non-profit organization recognized and authorized by the Department of Justice to practice immigration law. New Voice is located at Lyngate Community Church, in the city of Lynwood, CA. We are a DBA of The South Pacific District of the Christian and Missionary Alliance.
Oakland, California
The Oakland Unified School District’s Newcomer Wellness Initiative seeks to impact the wellbeing of the whole child and improving the school experience for newcomer youth.
The Sidewalk School is a minority led and operated rapid response organization fighting for equity and safety for asylum seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border by working to holistically meet the basic needs of the most vulnerable. We work alongside asylum seekers to empower, advocate and influence policy that advances the rights of those seeking protection.
Matamoros and Reynosa, Mexico