ABSTRACT
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 describe how we designed our project to center on undocumented student experiences and focused our attention on policies and practices. We drew on the experiential knowledge of the research team and community stakeholders to ensure that we would collect actionable data. We broadly disseminated findings over multiple platforms to engage different audiences. We engaged in active reflection to ensure our work continued to align with the project’s overarching mission. Ultimately, we suggest that these strategies ensured that our work effected real change to advance equity and inclusion for undocumented students.
