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On June 18, 2020, The Supreme Court made the historic decision to uphold the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. That decision has, and will continue to have, consequences that reverberate across the political landscape, especially as we gear up for the 2020 elections. Our expert panelists will draw on original data and analysis to shed light on the issue and comment on what the Court's decision means for higher education and the future of multiracial democracy more generally.

Co-sponsored by: Institute of Governmental Studies, Robert T. Matsui Center for Politics and Public Policy, Center for Race and Gender, Diversity and Democracy Research Cluster, Othering & Belonging Institute, Latinx Research Center, Center for the Study of Law and Society, Berkeley Interdisciplinary Migration Initiative, Social Science Matrix, and Berkeley Law.

Panelists: 

Jennifer M. Chacón is Professor of Law at UCLA School of Law. She was previously the Chancellor’s Professor of Law and the Senior Associate Dean for Administration at the University of California, Irvine, School of Law.  She is the author of an immigration law textbook and of numerous articles, book chapters and essays discussing immigration, criminal law, constitutional law, and citizenship issues.  Professor Chacón is the Chair of the American Association of Law School’s Section on Immigration.  She is also a member of the American Law Institute, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Rules Committee, the Advisory Committee of the American Bar Foundation’s “Future of Latinos in the U.S.” project, the University of Oxford Border Criminologies Advisory Group, and the New York City Bar Association.  She was the Convenor of the Immigration Policy Advisory Committee to then-Senator Barack Obama during his 2008 presidential campaign and an outside advisor to the Immigration Transition Team of President-Elect Barack Obama from November 2008 through January 2009. Professor Chacόn was an associate of the New York law firm of Davis Polk and Wardwell after clerking for the Honorable Sidney R. Thomas of the Ninth Circuit (1998-1999).  She began her career in law teaching at the U.C. Davis School of Law, where she received the Distinguished Teaching Award in 2009.  She has also held appointments as a Visiting Professor of Law at Stanford Law School (2015-2016) and at Harvard Law School (2014-2015).  She holds a J.D. from Yale Law School and an A.B. in International Relations from Stanford University. 

Shannon Gleeson is Associate Professor of Labor Relations, Law, & History at the Cornell ILR School.  She earned her Ph.D. in Sociology and Demography from the University of California, Berkeley and was previously on the faculty of the Latin American & Latino Studies Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz.  Her books include Accountability across Borders: Migrant Rights in North America (University of Texas Press, 2019, edited with Xóchitl Bada), Building Citizenship From Below: Precarity, Migration, and Agency (Routledge, 2017, edited with Marcel Paret), Precarious Claims: The Promise and Failure of Workplace Protections in the United States (University of California Press, 2016), The Nation and Its Peoples: Citizens, Denizens, Migrants (Routledge, 2014, edited with John Park), and Conflicting Commitments: The Politics of Enforcing Immigrant Worker Rights in San Jose and Houston (Cornell University Press, 2012).  Her other collaborative work examines consular protection and transnational migrant advocacy strategies (with Xóchitl Bada), the role of civil society and local governments in implementing the 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program (with Els de Graauw), and the impacts of temporary legal status on immigrant workers (with Kate Griffith).  She is also currently researching the responses of the labor movement to immigration policy under the Trump administration. 

Laura E. Enriquez is Assistant Professor in Chicano/Latino Studies at the University of California, Irvine. She is author of the forthcoming book, Of Love and Papers: How Immigration Policy Affects Romance and Family. In it she explores how immigration status creeps into the more personal aspects of everyday life, constraining family formation and limiting intergenerational mobility. She argues that the imprint of illegality remains, even upon obtaining DACA or permanent residency. She is also Principal Investigator on the Undocumented Student Equity Project and the UC Collaborative to Promote Immigrant and Student Equity, both initiatives dedicated to conducting research to identify best practices for advancing educational equity for undocumented students and students from mixed-status families.

G. Cristina Mora (moderator) is Associate Professor of Sociology at UC Berkeley and Interim Co-Director of the Institute of Governmental Studies. Mora completed her B.A. in Sociology at UC Berkeley in 2003 and earned her Ph.D. in Sociology from Princeton University in 2009. Before returning to Cal, she was a Provost Postdoctoral Scholar in Sociology at the University of Chicago. Professor Mora’s research focuses mainly on questions of racial and ethnic categorization, organizations, and immigration. Her book, Making Hispanics, was published in 2014 by the University of Chicago Press and provides a socio-historical account of the rise of the “Hispanic/Latino” panethnic category in the United States. This work, along with related articles, has received wide recognition, including the 2010 Best Dissertation Award and the 2018 Early Career Award (SREM) from the American Sociological Association.