In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Kevin Escudero, Associate Professor of American Studies and Ethnic Studies at Brown University and co-founder of the Migration Studies Initiative, to talk about coalition building, visibility, and what higher education owes its undocumented students right now. We get into his groundbreaking research on how undocumented Asian and Latinx activists used intersectional identity to build coalitions across movements, the launch of his new book UndocuAsians, and what he is seeing on college campuses as enforcement intensifies and fear grows. Dr. Escudero leaves us with a challenge: stop waiting for your institution to act, think: how can I be a sanctuary person?

In this episode:

• Why undocumented Asian voices have been largely invisible, even within immigrant rights movements, and what changes when we center them
• The three-part identity mobilization model and how activists used it to build powerful coalitions
• What Brown University is doing to support undocumented students and what other institutions can learn
• The concept of sanctuary people and what it looks like in practice