Doing Community and Institutionally Engaged Work and Promoting Immigrant Well-being While Building a Research Career

Introduction

As I started writing this piece, I was reading the Forward that Manuel Castro wrote for my (after too many years!) forthcoming book on immigrant mobility, in which he thanks me for mentoring him. Manny is now New York City’s Commissioner of the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs, but we first met, via email, when he was an undocumented college student at another university, asking for help on his senior thesis, which I offered. Since then, we have worked on projects together promoting immigrant well-being. Manny’s words made me realize that some of my most effective work on immigrant well-being is not now “mine,” but rather lies in the downstream, years-later, impact of having worked to mentor, help, and fund immigrant students, community leaders, and organizations, points to which I return.

I thank the editors for asking me to write this piece on how to do publicly and community-engaged work promoting immigrant well-being, while developing a research career. I draw on my experience as a scholar who was not from the immigrant communities with which he worked, and who believes we should seek to help others and to create a society that respects the rights, dignity, and well-being of all its members, including immigrant families. I have sought to study questions that could help reduce injustice or inequality, and where possible to work toward practical action promoting such change, inside and beyond academic institutions, including work developing the capacity for such work of immigrant communities, students, and leaders. I applaud the Im/migrant Well-being Scholar Collaborative initiative’s (IWSC or Collaborative) focus on immigrant well-being, which affirms not only work that seeks to make structural or policy change or to change debates (common foci of academic analysis), but also work that directly helps others, builds community capacity, or mentors broadly.

Fostering Immigrant Well-being Is Publicly Engaged Scholarship, But Mind the Controlling Images and False Choices

Scholars working to foster immigrant well-being, including via the IWSC, do publicly engaged scholarship, which seeks to use research to address key social issues, such as inequality or injustice. The IWSC usefully broadens the common academic focus only on critically analyzing the causes of injustice or inequality, to also include how our work can improve well-being, including by direct help or by changing policies or practices. Such work seeks to lessen a central contradiction in scholarly careers: That most scholars become social scientists hoping their work will help others and make society better, but the structures of academic institutions and careers channel our work mostly away from those goals (Burawoy, 2005; Smith, 2022). Moreover, publicly engaged research is too often not counted, or counted as marginal “service,” in tenure, promotion, or funding decisions, rather than in the more valued “research” category.

This could have been, and could still be, different. (I write here about my own discipline, sociology. But the points apply more broadly to the social sciences.) Twenty years ago, Michael Burawoy used his American Sociological Association (ASA) presidency to catalyze debate on public sociology, after which ASA created Commissions and documents offering concrete guidance for considering public sociology in academic careers, for example, by doing post-hoc peer review by experts in the specific field of the impacts of publicly engaged research and work (ASA, 2005, 2007, 2016; Burawoy, 2005; Gans, 2016; Vitullo, 2022; Smith, 2022, 2023). Although a few universities are adopting such practices, few explicitly support publicly engaged scholarship, meaning that younger scholars face difficult choices and realities (Smith, 2022; Vitullo, 2022), including whether to start doing publicly engaged scholarship pre-or-post tenure. ¹ The prudent, post-tenure, strategy, is advanced by strong supporters of publicly engaged scholarship such as Adam Gamoran (President of the W.T. Grant Foundation), who also advocates treating publicly engaged scholarship as “research” (Smith, 2022). This approach is often pursued by scholars working with larger N data sets. Those doing fieldwork involving personal relationships with study participants or organizations often use the From the Start strategy, and see such engaged work fostering immigrant well-being as a way for them to keep the moral bargain with study participants, for universities to keep that bargain with society, and as part being public scholars.

Pursuing a publicly engaged research career that improves immigrant well-being will likely face challenges of “controlling images,” which are not empirically grounded, but guide stories that influence policy or practice (Collins, 2000; Vasquez-Tokos & Norton-Smith, 2017), or here, can be used dismissively in assessments of scholarly work. A first controlling image is the dismissive “MeSearch” description, usually of research analyzing a vulnerable group to which the researcher belongs. (See articles in the 2023 Special Issue of Sociological Forum I edited on publicly engaged sociology, by Felicia Arriaga; Meg Bishop, Rachel Gonzales, and Stephen Russell; Joya Misra; and my introduction). For example, a prominent Latina scholar (who requested anonymity) told me of a critic doubting the “objectivity” of her large-N quantitative intervention-outcome study, because her strong relationship with Latina/o/e participants in her study had yielded very high retention rates, which the critic saw as a disqualifying MeSearch limitation rather than as a strength.

The second controlling image is “activist,” which can be used conjointly with the MeSearch image, but can be separately aimed at scholars who are not members of the studied group. For example, in consulting with a senior administrator about City University of New York (CUNY) protecting me if my research on discrimination against Hispanic voters got me sued, his first question was if the study was “really research” and not “activism,” despite it being funded by CUNY and reviewed by CUNY’s IRB as research. (New York State education law protects faculty against such suits.)

Given the silent ubiquity of these controlling images, I worry about the oft-heard, but, I think false, choice between “standing with the people/community” one studies and using scientific methods in that study (Smith, 2022). Publicly engaged scholars should design their research scientifically, and describe, claim, and defend the scientific bases of their research, inside and outside the academy. The recognition they gain from that work can increase their capacity to do work that improves immigrant well-being, and establishes their careers and enables them to make a living. Moreover, defending one’s research design and methods is central to some publicly engaged work, such as expert witness testimony (which I have done for cases involving deportations, asylum, Convention Against Torture, voting rights, and deferred action on childhood arrivals (DACA), among other issues). Judges act as gatekeepers in trials, and may ask you to explain why you and your research should be treated as “expert.” ² You may similarly be asked such questions in public testimony seeking to change policies or practices to enhance immigrant well-being.

How to Find or Develop Such Opportunities? For Me, They Emerged in Relationships and Work

The editors asked me a hard-to-answer question—How to find or develop opportunities to concretely work with organizations, lawyers, institutions, and your university to promote immigrant well-being? My answer is that seeking to help others and doing publicly engaged scholarship are philosophical and spiritual elements of my work, seen as a vocation, expressed in specific practices, made possible by institutional and community relationships developed over decades in New York City. These relationships—including with the CUNY, immigrant organizations and nonprofits, the Mexican Consulate, and civic and political leaders—made it possible to act when opportunities arose. So, I offer not a specific How To, but rather a history and some practices enacting a specific approach to one’s work and place in the world.

A first practice, and orienting philosophy, has been to treat the organizations, institutions, and community leaders and members, like important people in my life, and to build, manage, and invest in these relationships. This meant saying yes when asked for help, or offering to help when I could, including helping undocumented students (who did not know they could) apply to CUNY, or helping someone being deported. With organizations, this has meant, as feasible, helping at high need times or with specific tasks where my skills were useful.

Second, I went to a bazillion meetings and listened and spoke about how institutions and organizations—especially CUNY—could address challenges confronting immigrants, and especially the Mexican community with whom I worked. These are now decades long, ongoing, conversations with leaders and now friends about what, concretely, CUNY, the City, and other entities can, could, and should do to help and be just toward immigrants. I learned from these conversations. These conversations also meant people thought of me when problems or opportunities arose.

Third, listen to your study participants and talk your findings and theories through with them, which can deepen your understanding of the issues and offer extra insight into policies or practices that could improve immigrant well-being.

Fourth, while I offered to help or mentor by inclination, I was also followed a simple, strategic, logic. I especially sought to mentor and fund current immigrant students and to recruit and fund as students community leaders who were already doing work to empower their community and foster immigrant well-being, so they would return to that work with master’s degrees. The conversion of investment in education to work on behalf of the community is 100% in this scenario. My pitch with this logic landed a large donation for Baruch College and funded such immigrant leader students for years. The years-later payoff of this mentoring is that so many former students do amazing work, including Commissioner Castro, cofounders of United We Dream, a key staffer in the New York State Senate, a Program Director of an after-school program.

Fifth, recognize that the social worlds of community, nonprofit, or advocacy organizations differ from the academic world. Most small- and medium-sized nonprofits working with immigrants must constantly raise funds, or cut staff or programs. You can strengthen these collaborations by organizing the work so it adds value without burdening the organization; by bringing funding to the organization or increasing its capacity; and by helping the organization get public sphere credit for its work, e.g., by doing pro bono analysis or reports, which help it attract funding.

Sixth, keep clear that the arguments you can make as a scholar depend on the data and research. In one legal case, the immigrant plaintiffs’ lawyer asked me if I could cite only part of the findings in a scholarly article that would more cleanly support their case, and leave out findings that might be used against their position that DACA strongly improved the well-being of recipients, for example by including increasing high school completion rates for Hispanic teens. I told the lawyer I could not cherry-pick findings, and argued that explaining the apparent discrepancy—that some DACA recipients in college had dropped out after getting DACA—would be stronger than ignoring it. The authors, and my own research, showed that some 4-year college students left full-time schooling after getting DACA, because they had a work permit, and could now help their families by earning higher incomes, whereas 2-year college students were mostly already working, and hence mostly did not leave school. Explaining the mechanism by which DACA produced this apparently contradictory finding was the stronger approach

Finally, do not be an extractive researcher, a paracaidista (paracaida = parachute; paracaidistas = parachutists), who drops into a research community, gets the data, and gets out, without developing real relationships or offering reciprocity. People in your studies should never feel like specimens, but rather like partners who collaborated because they see a project’s importance.

Strengthening Institutional–Community Relationships: The Growing CUNY–Mexican Community Link and Increasing Second-Generation College Graduation Rates

Universities, and especially CUNY, are good places to do work promoting immigrant well-being because they have an interest and duty to promote education and thus improve community well-being, including newcomer immigrant communities (Smith, 2022). Moreover, universities can also be rightly responsive to just demands for action, as can medical, educational, or religious institutions (Gamoran, 2021; Nalani et al., 2021). I have tried to use my work and research to develop and expand CUNY’s relationship with the Mexican community in the nearly 20 years I have worked here, always working with others inside and outside CUNY. I mention only some of this work here.

CUNY has been an excellent institution through which to do this work, which I believe has increased college attendance among second-generation Mexicans in New York City and promoted immigrant well-being. Beginning in the 1990s, I worked with community leaders such as Angelo Cabrera to promote Mexican college enrollment at CUNY. Then Vice-Chancellor Jay Hershenson created a Commission on Education and Mexican and Mexican Americans (led by Jesus Perez with Alan Wernick) on which I served, and funded a small study I did analyzing why Mexicans were not applying to CUNY. (CUNY had only about 750 Mexican students at the time, of a college-eligible population I estimated was about 40,000). The Commission was succeeded in 2012 by the CUNY Mexican Studies Institute (led by Alyshia Galvez, then by Jose Higuera; I have served on its advisory board since then), whose programs have promoted immigrant well-being. These include the Si Se Puede! Outreach program and website promoting CUNY applications, the Windows of Educational Opportunity program at the Mexican Consulate, and the Becarios program, that has offered fellowships and career-starting internships to hundreds of students. I led for years the Baruch College-Mexican Consulate Leadership program, which sought to develop individual and organizational nonprofit capacity in the Mexican community. For example, it helped immigrant organizations seek nonprofit status, enabling them to get funding, and to develop stronger nonprofit practices. A key goal of the program was to bring the Mexican community into CUNY so it became, as one participant said, “our home too.”

I believe all this work boosted the college attendance and graduation rates of second-generation (U.S. born) Mexicans in New York City to levels dramatically higher than in other places (Smith, 2024). ³ In most studies in the last 40 years, the second-generation Mexican college graduation rate has been 13%–14%, falling in one study to 6% in the third and fourth generations (Telles and Ortiz, 2008). But Census data showed in 2021 that 49% of Mexican second-generation women, and 42% of men (age 25 and over) in New York City had graduated from college; and 85% of them attended public colleges, mostly CUNY. My forthcoming book analyzes how this mobility happened and posits key roles for programs and policies of CUNY, New York City, and New York State.

Promoting Immigrant Community Well-being Via the DACA Access Project: Building Community Capacity, Supporting New York State’s Greenlight Law, and Defending DACA and DACA Recipients

Scholars doing publicly engaged work to improve immigrant well-being should both strategize with community leaders and organizations about that work, and also realize that one cannot always know if or how their research or work will have an impact, because the findings can be surprising, and because opportunities to apply them can emerge unseen. The DACA Access Project emerged from long-term conversations with immigrant community and organization leaders (some my former students) about why Mexicans in New York had under-applied to DACA (many fewer applied than had been estimated were eligible), and how to promote DACA applications. Working with them, I secured a large grant that helped several hundred immigrant youth get DACA or permanent legal status, directly bettering their and their families’ well-being. The Project also built community capacity by training immigrant organizations and staffers to promote DACA applications and work with data, and offering sessions by expert nonprofit practitioners in skills they requested, including fundraising.

The Project also generated data showing that (1) what our participants called racially profiled traffic stops were a key cause of deportation in New York State; and (2) that DACA applicants well-being increased dramatically after getting DACA, and that (3) they did not, as a group, return to Mexico (Smith, 2023; Smith et al., 2021). These data were helpful in passing New York State’s 2019 Greenlight Law, which enables established undocumented immigrants to get a Standard driver’s license, which should reduce deportations due to traffic stops. I wrote a DataBrief for the Greenlight Campaign, and published an Op-Ed two days before the New York Assembly passed the Greenlight law in 2019. A key factor was showing, with data, that these traffic stops harmed young, U.S. citizen, children in these families. The data also helped defend DACA in a federal lawsuit that sought to end it, and in a lawsuit against Wells Fargo alleging discrimination against DACA recipients (settled for $20 million, without admission of fault; I was an expert witness in both cases).

I have a lovely memory of calling “Juana” the night the Greenlight law passed. Her story of racially profiled traffic stops, and her children’s subsequent terror at the sight of the police, gave the Op-Ed emotional power. We both cried in talking about how the new law could stop families from being separated. When we hung up, Juana called her relatives to tell them about the law.

Closing Remarks and Strategies

Developing a research career and regularly doing publicly engaged work to promote immigrant well-being has, for me, enacted my understanding of being a scholar as a vocation that includes these two dimensions. It is not the only way to be useful. Many excellent scholars, including some to whom I am grateful for their mentorship, contribute meaningfully through their research and mentoring. But if you want to adopt this publicly engaged, vocational approach, I offer few suggestions (Hartmann, 2016; Smith, 2022).

First, take care to guard personal and/or family time. Even with my good life conditions, a very supportive spouse (with a public sector law job that offered flexibility), and not facing gender or racial imbalances at work, striking a proper work–life balance has sometimes been difficult. In key moments—for example, supporting the Greenlight Law, writing an amicus brief—this makes sense. But be careful it does not become a way of being. Block out time for fun with your family and friends, and do those fun things.

Second, organize your research and writing as projects with deliverables, not as life processes. Block out whole days to write, and move most student meetings to teaching days. Make plans with deadlines for your writing. Keep a time diary of your work time. When you finish writing, note where you were headed, so it easier to restart the next day or next week. In your planning, know that things will take longer than you think, and add extra time. Avoid starting too many new projects—especially fieldwork projects—before finishing current ones.

Third, push at your institution for greater recognition, reward, and support of publicly engaged scholarship and work that promotes immigrant well-being. I recommend reading Andrés Besserer Rayas’ (2023) article arguing for mentorship and apprenticeship in publicly engaged scholarship in graduate school, based in his work fighting to stop over 40,000 Venezuelans in Colombia from losing their Colombian nationality, and with it their right to work and to health insurance.

Fourth, do not start a nonprofit organization, especially not before tenure. Surprisingly, I am regularly asked about this. I am proud of serving over 20 years on the board of an immigrant education and organizing nonprofit of which I was a cofounder, and impressed at how the staff, board, and families have grown the organization. But be careful. Nonprofits require work that scholars are not trained to do and social capital relationships they usually do not have; developing these takes time.

Finally, try to find meaning, and where possible, have fun, doing this work. Doing research is inherently creative. Fieldwork and community work develop relationships and friendships, which are fun. We are privileged to do this work, but it also confronts us personally with the harms done by the legal violence of our current immigration system. We should take a page from social work research to recognize moral injury—the harm that befalls practitioners (doctors, social workers, and yes researchers) who repeatedly witness harms we are powerless to stop. ⁴ While our primary focus should be on harms to immigrants we work with, I have found this concept helpful in dealing with, for example, losing a deportation case, or talking about how to help an immigrant informant who gradually became gravely ill, who had not sought care for fear of cost or lack of health insurance. We can find meaning in the fact that our work seeks to combat injustice, that the people we work with know this is our intent, that we can sometimes directly help, and that our research can sometimes help fight or change unjust policies or practices. If our work rarely “fixes” larger injustices, it is also not nothing, and hopefully contributes to larger changes.