L E Enriquez
Biographic Data
| ID | 49371 |
|---|---|
| NAME | L E Enriquez |
| GIVEN NAMES | L E |
| FAMILY NAME | Enriquez |
| SIGNATURE | ENRIQUEZ L E |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California, Irvine |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6580-3109 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 36 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 314 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 36 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 10 |
Collective Care and Methodological Carework
Latinx Sociology – and Latinx Social Science broadly – pushes against hegemonic research models by grounding inquiry in Latinx standpoints and incorporating critical methods. Yet it can be challenging for scholars to implement or innovate such methods. Through storytelling, we theorize collective care – defined as efforts to care for ourselves, each other, and community well-being – as a logic to guide research with Latinx communities. Drawing ex…
Multi-level Factors Influencing College Campus Basic Needs Service Utilization
Immigration-impacted college students face unique challenges that increase their risk of experiencing basic needs insecurity. This study examined multi-level factors influencing the use of campus basic needs centers among Latino immigration-impacted students attending the University of California (UC). We analyzed three Latino undergraduate student populations: (1) undocumented immigrants, (2) U.S. citizens with undocumented immigrant parents, an…
Food Insecurity Pipeline
Systemic inequities increase the risk of material hardships, including food insecurity, among immigrant households. Informed by 33 qualitative interviews with Latina/o/x undergraduate students who are undocumented or U.S. citizens with undocumented parents, we examine their experiences of food insecurity in their day-to-day lives. We find a food insecurity pipeline as students’ experiences of food insecurity begin early in childhood in their home…
Low-Income and Legally Vulnerable
Immigration-impacted college students, including undocumented students and U.S. citizens with undocumented parents, struggle with food and essential needs insecurity. Drawing on focus groups with 38 immigration-impacted undergraduates, we examine barriers to campus essential needs resource use and investigate the extent to which self or parental immigration status influences use. Findings reveal structural, psychological, and operational barriers…
Student empowerment and creative classrooms
Centering Agency
Research has established that legal vulnerability has detrimental consequences for the mental health of undocumented individuals. The purpose of our study is to consider how practicing agency is associated with mental health in the face of such structural marginalization. To meet this goal, we conceptualize actions taken to resist structural inequality as acts of resistance to center immigrants’ agency in navigating and contesting their marginali…
Anxious Activists? Examining Immigration Policy Threat, Political Engagement, and Anxiety among College Students with Different Self/Parental Immigration Statuses
Restrictive immigration policies harm the mental health of undocumented immigrants and their U.S. citizen family members. As a sociopolitical stressor, threat to family due to immigration policy can heighten anxiety, yet it is unclear whether political engagement helps immigrant-origin students to cope. We used a cross-sectional survey of college students from immigrant families (N = 2,511) to investigate whether anxiety symptomatology was associ…
A latent profile analysis of U.S. undocumented college students’ advocacy communication strategies and its relationship with health
Undocumented youth engage in advocacy efforts to improve their social conditions. Deploying an expanded definition of advocacy communication, this study (a) examined the heterogeneity of undocumented collegestudents' advocacy communication by identifying profiles of undocumented college students based on their participation in various advocacy communication strategies and (b) examined how these advocacy profiles are associated with health (i.e. a…
Immigration Status, Legal Vulnerability, and Suicidal/Self-harm Ideation Disparities Among Immigrant-Origin Latinx Young Adults in the U.S
Immigration-Related Discrimination and Mental Health among Latino Undocumented Students and U.S. Citizen Students with Undocumented Parents
Research has consistently linked discrimination and poorer health; however, fewer studies have focused on immigration-related discrimination and mental health outcomes. Drawing on quantitative surveys (N = 1,131) and qualitative interviews (N = 63) with Latino undergraduate students who are undocumented or U.S. citizens with undocumented parents, we examine the association between perceived immigration-related discrimination and mental health out…
Mental Health and Covid-19 Pandemic Stressors Among Latina/o/x College Students with Varying Self and Parental Immigration Status
The COVID-19 pandemic has produced significant psychological distress for college students due to the sudden proliferation of stressors. We examine whether and how self and parental immigration status contributes to Latina/o/x college students' mental health and pandemic stressors during the initial months of the pandemic. We draw on quantitative and qualitative survey data collected in March-June 2020 with 1,600 Latina/o/x University of Californ…
Mental health help-seeking among Latina/o/x undocumented college students
Results indicate that a greater use of resources and an inclusive campus environment, as well as efforts to minimize policy-related feelings of social exclusion, may facilitate undocumented students' professional mental health help-seeking. These findings emphasize the need to take multiple and multi-level ecological factors into account when considering mental health service use, particularly in the case of undocumented immigrants and likely oth…
Centering social justice in public sociology
This chapter explores ways to advance social justice within the context of public sociology. Drawing on our experiences with the Undocumented Student Equity Project, we contend that that our ability to open conversations with non-academic audiences was bolstered by our commitment to social justice. We provide a brief history of California’s undocumented students’ experience in higher education to contextualize the project and our goals. We descri…
Physical and mental health impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic among college students who are undocumented or have undocumented parents
Negative COVID-related mental and physical health was widespread. Separation from campus-based resources was detrimental during the early stages of the pandemic
Politically Excluded, Undocu-Engaged
Prior research suggests that hostile immigration policies can motivate undocumented immigrants’ political engagement, but may also create unique risks that limit their willingness to participate. We examine how perceptions of the immigration policy context may help or hinder undocumented college students’ political engagement. Using data from an online survey of 1,277 undocumented college students attending California 4-year public universities, …
Disrupted Education
Prior research has established that legal vulnerability affects undocumented students’ educational experiences. Building on this work, we examine how undocumented immigration status may disrupt academic performance through students’ behavioral engagement in their coursework. Drawing on a survey of nearly 1,277 undocumented college students in California, we use latent profile analysis to identify student profiles based on their experiences of imm…
Evaluating the Effect of Legal Vulnerabilities and Social Support on the Mental Health of Undocumented College Students
Undocumented students face considerable stressors due to their precarious legal status, economic disadvantages, and social exclusion. Building on a growing body of the literature that has examined the mental health and psychological wellbeing of undocumented students, we disentangle the effects of multiple dimensions of legal vulnerability. Specifically, we examine whether multiple dimensions of legal vulnerability are associated with increased e…
Legal Vulnerability and Campus Environment
Prior research has established that undocumented students experience structural marginalization which compromises their access, retention, and success in higher education. Building on this work, this study turns attention to their academic engagement, an important intermediary outcome. Using survey data collected from 1,277 undocumented undergraduate students attending California 4-year public universities, we examine the extent to which legal vu…
What Helps Students Get Help
Academic support services are an important institutional resource that can support student success and retention. However, little research has examined undocumented students’ resource uptake, aside from demonstrating that exclusionary policies and experiences reduce undocumented students’ access to and use of institutional resources. In this article, we use regression analysis to identify what factors may contribute to undocumented students’ use …
Life after College
Prior research has established that undocumented immigration status disrupts students’ transition into life after college, but limited research has examined their preparatory experiences in college. Drawing on interviews with 154 undocumented college students and 32 alumni, we examine how immigration status impacts undocumented students’ career planning and preparation. We find that professional development opportunities and college social networ…
Advancing Research on Undocumented College Students in California through a UC and CSU Collaboration
Bienvenidos,Welcome to Volume 20, Number 3 of the Journal of Latinos and Education. Throughout this volume, we continue to celebrate the journal’s 20-Year Anniversary.With your support, the JLE has
Toward a Nuanced and Contextualized Understanding of Undocumented College Students
Prior research has established that undocumented immigrant experiences are dynamic, reflecting the complex web of immigration-related policies that create legal vulnerability. As such, undocumented college students’ experiences must be situated in their current policy context. Drawing on descriptive analyses of a survey of 1,277 undocumented 4-year college students in California, we examine how undocumented students are faring in a relatively inc…
Situational triggers and protective locations
Previous research has documented the severe consequences of deportation and conceptualised deportability as a key factor that produces and sustains immigrant illegality. Drawing on interview and survey data with 1.5 generation undocumented young adults in California, we explore the mechanisms that structure the salience of deportability in everyday life. We argue that deportability is a situationally triggered fear that is reduced when individual…
Of Love and Papers
A free open access ebook is available upon publication. Learn more at www.luminosoa.org. Of Love and Papers explores how immigration policies are fundamentally reshaping Latino families. Drawing on two waves of interviews with undocumented young adults, Enriquez investigates how immigration status creeps into the most personal aspects of everyday life, intersecting with gender to constrain family formation. The imprint of illegality remains, even…
Borders of Belonging
Multigenerational Punishment
Estimates suggest that approximately 16.6 million people in the United States are members of mixed-status families composed of undocumented immigrants and U.S. citizens or documented immigrants. Drawing on interviews with 32 undocumented 1.5-generation parents, the author explores how immigration laws affect undocumented parents and their citizen children. She finds that U.S. citizen children and their undocumented parents often share in the risk…
A 'master status' or the 'final straw'? Assessing the role of immigration status in Latino undocumented youths' pathways out of school
Previous research on undocumented youth and young adults in the United States asserts that immigration status is a ‘master status’, wherein undocumented status overshadows the impact of other social locations. Drawing primarily on interviews with 45 Latina/o undocumented immigrant youth who stopped out of school, I assess whether the ‘master status’ explanation accurately characterises how immigration status shapes undocumented youths’ pathways o…
Undocumented and Citizen Students Unite”
Social movement coalitions present unique opportunities and challenges for collective action as they bring together organizations, movements, and individuals who hold diverse interests and social positions. The literature suggests that collective identity and shared ideology both offer opportunities for bridging these differences, but few have addressed their relative utility. Drawing on a case study of a university-based coalition of undocumente…
Coming out of the shadows
Beyond access
Solutions to address utilization disparities must go beyond eliminating formal barriers to health access and address such psychosocial barriers, as well as the larger political and social context that produces them
Mediating Illegality
Immigration federalism scholarship has established that state and local government policies can make federally defined immigration status more or less consequential. Drawing primarily on focus groups and interviews with 184 undocumented students attending the University of California, we suggest that institutional policies work alongside state and local efforts to mediate the consequences of illegality for undocumented students. We find that the …
Situational triggers and protective locations
Previous research has documented the severe consequences of deportation and conceptualised deportability as a key factor that produces and sustains immigrant illegality. Drawing on interview and survey data with 1.5 generation undocumented young adults in California, we explore the mechanisms that structure the salience of deportability in everyday life. We argue that deportability is a situationally triggered fear that is reduced when individual…
Gendering Illegality
Although previous scholarship demonstrates that gender profoundly affects the immigrant incorporation process, few studies assess the role of gender in the lives of 1.5-generation undocumented young adults. Drawing on 92 in-depth interviews, I examine how gender and immigration status intersect to affect undocumented young adults' dating, marriage, and parenting experiences. Although all undocumented young adults face the same structural limitati…
We Are Americans
Life after College
Prior research has established that undocumented immigration status disrupts students’ transition into life after college, but limited research has examined their preparatory experiences in college. Drawing on interviews with 154 undocumented college students and 32 alumni, we examine how immigration status impacts undocumented students’ career planning and preparation. We find that professional development opportunities and college social networ…
Frozen and Stalled? Gender and Migration Scholarship in the 21st Century
Gender and migration is a complex relationship, involving dynamic interactions between women and men, embedded in a variety of institutions (families, labor markets, and others) that all vary across different periods of historical time. Although many studies in the field of gender and migration have appeared since the late 1970s, few contemporary migration scholars centrally integrate gender into their work. In 2006, Donato and colleagues called …
Evaluating the Effect of Legal Vulnerabilities and Social Support on the Mental Health of Undocumented College Students
Undocumented students face considerable stressors due to their precarious legal status, economic disadvantages, and social exclusion. Building on a growing body of the literature that has examined the mental health and psychological wellbeing of undocumented students, we disentangle the effects of multiple dimensions of legal vulnerability. Specifically, we examine whether multiple dimensions of legal vulnerability are associated with increased e…
Driver's Licenses for All? Racialized Illegality and the Implementation of Progressive Immigration Policy in California
Progressive subfederal immigration policy aims to reduce the consequences of illegality for undocumented immigrants. Drawing on interviews with representatives from immigrant‐serving organizations in California, we examine the case of Assembly Bill (A.B.) 60 driver's licenses to assess whether all Californian undocumented immigrants have equal access to a driver's license. Although A.B. 60 was race‐neutral legislation, we argue that its implement…
Immigration-Related Discrimination and Mental Health among Latino Undocumented Students and U.S. Citizen Students with Undocumented Parents
Research has consistently linked discrimination and poorer health; however, fewer studies have focused on immigration-related discrimination and mental health outcomes. Drawing on quantitative surveys (N = 1,131) and qualitative interviews (N = 63) with Latino undergraduate students who are undocumented or U.S. citizens with undocumented parents, we examine the association between perceived immigration-related discrimination and mental health out…
Mental health help-seeking among Latina/o/x undocumented college students
Results indicate that a greater use of resources and an inclusive campus environment, as well as efforts to minimize policy-related feelings of social exclusion, may facilitate undocumented students' professional mental health help-seeking. These findings emphasize the need to take multiple and multi-level ecological factors into account when considering mental health service use, particularly in the case of undocumented immigrants and likely oth…
Legal Vulnerability and Campus Environment
Prior research has established that undocumented students experience structural marginalization which compromises their access, retention, and success in higher education. Building on this work, this study turns attention to their academic engagement, an important intermediary outcome. Using survey data collected from 1,277 undocumented undergraduate students attending California 4-year public universities, we examine the extent to which legal vu…
Politically Excluded, Undocu-Engaged
Prior research suggests that hostile immigration policies can motivate undocumented immigrants’ political engagement, but may also create unique risks that limit their willingness to participate. We examine how perceptions of the immigration policy context may help or hinder undocumented college students’ political engagement. Using data from an online survey of 1,277 undocumented college students attending California 4-year public universities, …
Toward a Nuanced and Contextualized Understanding of Undocumented College Students
Prior research has established that undocumented immigrant experiences are dynamic, reflecting the complex web of immigration-related policies that create legal vulnerability. As such, undocumented college students’ experiences must be situated in their current policy context. Drawing on descriptive analyses of a survey of 1,277 undocumented 4-year college students in California, we examine how undocumented students are faring in a relatively inc…
Borders of Belonging
Disrupted Education
Prior research has established that legal vulnerability affects undocumented students’ educational experiences. Building on this work, we examine how undocumented immigration status may disrupt academic performance through students’ behavioral engagement in their coursework. Drawing on a survey of nearly 1,277 undocumented college students in California, we use latent profile analysis to identify student profiles based on their experiences of imm…
Advancing Research on Undocumented College Students in California through a UC and CSU Collaboration
Bienvenidos,Welcome to Volume 20, Number 3 of the Journal of Latinos and Education. Throughout this volume, we continue to celebrate the journal’s 20-Year Anniversary.With your support, the JLE has
Low-Income and Legally Vulnerable
Immigration-impacted college students, including undocumented students and U.S. citizens with undocumented parents, struggle with food and essential needs insecurity. Drawing on focus groups with 38 immigration-impacted undergraduates, we examine barriers to campus essential needs resource use and investigate the extent to which self or parental immigration status influences use. Findings reveal structural, psychological, and operational barriers…
Immigration Status, Legal Vulnerability, and Suicidal/Self-harm Ideation Disparities Among Immigrant-Origin Latinx Young Adults in the U.S
What Helps Students Get Help
Academic support services are an important institutional resource that can support student success and retention. However, little research has examined undocumented students’ resource uptake, aside from demonstrating that exclusionary policies and experiences reduce undocumented students’ access to and use of institutional resources. In this article, we use regression analysis to identify what factors may contribute to undocumented students’ use …
We Are Americans
"Because We Feel the Pressure and We Also Feel the Support"
Drawing from the educational experiences of fifty-four undocumented immigrant college students, Laura E. Enriquez seeks to uncover the concrete ways in which social capital is used to successfully navigate K–12 educational institutions and pursue a higher education. Enriquez argues that there is a need for a more grounded understanding of how marginalized individuals develop and use social capital. She finds that undocumented immigrant students r…
Undocumented and Citizen Students Unite”
Social movement coalitions present unique opportunities and challenges for collective action as they bring together organizations, movements, and individuals who hold diverse interests and social positions. The literature suggests that collective identity and shared ideology both offer opportunities for bridging these differences, but few have addressed their relative utility. Drawing on a case study of a university-based coalition of undocumente…
Coming out of the shadows
Multigenerational Punishment
Estimates suggest that approximately 16.6 million people in the United States are members of mixed-status families composed of undocumented immigrants and U.S. citizens or documented immigrants. Drawing on interviews with 32 undocumented 1.5-generation parents, the author explores how immigration laws affect undocumented parents and their citizen children. She finds that U.S. citizen children and their undocumented parents often share in the risk…
Gendering Illegality
Although previous scholarship demonstrates that gender profoundly affects the immigrant incorporation process, few studies assess the role of gender in the lives of 1.5-generation undocumented young adults. Drawing on 92 in-depth interviews, I examine how gender and immigration status intersect to affect undocumented young adults' dating, marriage, and parenting experiences. Although all undocumented young adults face the same structural limitati…
Frozen and Stalled? Gender and Migration Scholarship in the 21st Century
Gender and migration is a complex relationship, involving dynamic interactions between women and men, embedded in a variety of institutions (families, labor markets, and others) that all vary across different periods of historical time. Although many studies in the field of gender and migration have appeared since the late 1970s, few contemporary migration scholars centrally integrate gender into their work. In 2006, Donato and colleagues called …
A 'master status' or the 'final straw'? Assessing the role of immigration status in Latino undocumented youths' pathways out of school
Previous research on undocumented youth and young adults in the United States asserts that immigration status is a ‘master status’, wherein undocumented status overshadows the impact of other social locations. Drawing primarily on interviews with 45 Latina/o undocumented immigrant youth who stopped out of school, I assess whether the ‘master status’ explanation accurately characterises how immigration status shapes undocumented youths’ pathways o…
Mediating Illegality
Immigration federalism scholarship has established that state and local government policies can make federally defined immigration status more or less consequential. Drawing primarily on focus groups and interviews with 184 undocumented students attending the University of California, we suggest that institutional policies work alongside state and local efforts to mediate the consequences of illegality for undocumented students. We find that the …
Driver's Licenses for All? Racialized Illegality and the Implementation of Progressive Immigration Policy in California
Progressive subfederal immigration policy aims to reduce the consequences of illegality for undocumented immigrants. Drawing on interviews with representatives from immigrant‐serving organizations in California, we examine the case of Assembly Bill (A.B.) 60 driver's licenses to assess whether all Californian undocumented immigrants have equal access to a driver's license. Although A.B. 60 was race‐neutral legislation, we argue that its implement…
Beyond access
Solutions to address utilization disparities must go beyond eliminating formal barriers to health access and address such psychosocial barriers, as well as the larger political and social context that produces them
Of Love and Papers
A free open access ebook is available upon publication. Learn more at www.luminosoa.org. Of Love and Papers explores how immigration policies are fundamentally reshaping Latino families. Drawing on two waves of interviews with undocumented young adults, Enriquez investigates how immigration status creeps into the most personal aspects of everyday life, intersecting with gender to constrain family formation. The imprint of illegality remains, even…
Borders of Belonging
Centering social justice in public sociology
This chapter explores ways to advance social justice within the context of public sociology. Drawing on our experiences with the Undocumented Student Equity Project, we contend that that our ability to open conversations with non-academic audiences was bolstered by our commitment to social justice. We provide a brief history of California’s undocumented students’ experience in higher education to contextualize the project and our goals. We descri…
Physical and mental health impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic among college students who are undocumented or have undocumented parents
Negative COVID-related mental and physical health was widespread. Separation from campus-based resources was detrimental during the early stages of the pandemic
Politically Excluded, Undocu-Engaged
Prior research suggests that hostile immigration policies can motivate undocumented immigrants’ political engagement, but may also create unique risks that limit their willingness to participate. We examine how perceptions of the immigration policy context may help or hinder undocumented college students’ political engagement. Using data from an online survey of 1,277 undocumented college students attending California 4-year public universities, …
Disrupted Education
Prior research has established that legal vulnerability affects undocumented students’ educational experiences. Building on this work, we examine how undocumented immigration status may disrupt academic performance through students’ behavioral engagement in their coursework. Drawing on a survey of nearly 1,277 undocumented college students in California, we use latent profile analysis to identify student profiles based on their experiences of imm…
Evaluating the Effect of Legal Vulnerabilities and Social Support on the Mental Health of Undocumented College Students
Undocumented students face considerable stressors due to their precarious legal status, economic disadvantages, and social exclusion. Building on a growing body of the literature that has examined the mental health and psychological wellbeing of undocumented students, we disentangle the effects of multiple dimensions of legal vulnerability. Specifically, we examine whether multiple dimensions of legal vulnerability are associated with increased e…
Legal Vulnerability and Campus Environment
Prior research has established that undocumented students experience structural marginalization which compromises their access, retention, and success in higher education. Building on this work, this study turns attention to their academic engagement, an important intermediary outcome. Using survey data collected from 1,277 undocumented undergraduate students attending California 4-year public universities, we examine the extent to which legal vu…
What Helps Students Get Help
Academic support services are an important institutional resource that can support student success and retention. However, little research has examined undocumented students’ resource uptake, aside from demonstrating that exclusionary policies and experiences reduce undocumented students’ access to and use of institutional resources. In this article, we use regression analysis to identify what factors may contribute to undocumented students’ use …
Life after College
Prior research has established that undocumented immigration status disrupts students’ transition into life after college, but limited research has examined their preparatory experiences in college. Drawing on interviews with 154 undocumented college students and 32 alumni, we examine how immigration status impacts undocumented students’ career planning and preparation. We find that professional development opportunities and college social networ…
Advancing Research on Undocumented College Students in California through a UC and CSU Collaboration
Bienvenidos,Welcome to Volume 20, Number 3 of the Journal of Latinos and Education. Throughout this volume, we continue to celebrate the journal’s 20-Year Anniversary.With your support, the JLE has
Toward a Nuanced and Contextualized Understanding of Undocumented College Students
Prior research has established that undocumented immigrant experiences are dynamic, reflecting the complex web of immigration-related policies that create legal vulnerability. As such, undocumented college students’ experiences must be situated in their current policy context. Drawing on descriptive analyses of a survey of 1,277 undocumented 4-year college students in California, we examine how undocumented students are faring in a relatively inc…
Situational triggers and protective locations
Previous research has documented the severe consequences of deportation and conceptualised deportability as a key factor that produces and sustains immigrant illegality. Drawing on interview and survey data with 1.5 generation undocumented young adults in California, we explore the mechanisms that structure the salience of deportability in everyday life. We argue that deportability is a situationally triggered fear that is reduced when individual…
Mental Health and Covid-19 Pandemic Stressors Among Latina/o/x College Students with Varying Self and Parental Immigration Status
The COVID-19 pandemic has produced significant psychological distress for college students due to the sudden proliferation of stressors. We examine whether and how self and parental immigration status contributes to Latina/o/x college students' mental health and pandemic stressors during the initial months of the pandemic. We draw on quantitative and qualitative survey data collected in March-June 2020 with 1,600 Latina/o/x University of Californ…
Political science (30 works) · Immigration (25 works) · Migration, Health and Trauma (25 works) · Psychology (21 works) · Sociology (19 works) · Law (18 works) · Racial and Ethnic Identity Research (16 works) · Migration and Labor Dynamics (13 works) · Social Psychology (13 works) · Law (11 works)