The Influence of the Trump Era on Sustaining Whiteness through Imperialist Reclamation on College Campuses: How Undocumented Students Experience the Normalization of Racist Nativism

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for the opportunity to read and review your research. I am happy to review for the special issue “Toward more inclusive and equitable college and university environments” edited by Dr. Museus, and it was a pleasure becoming acquainted with your manuscript.

 

The purpose of your research, to examine how anti-immigration political rhetoric shapes campus climates for undocumented students, is timely and important. Overall, your study covers many relevant points of discussion, but I suggest you narrow the focus of this paper to one or two key arguments. For example, in your introduction you describe the purpose of this manuscript in five ways: 

“we seek to understand how the broader social and political climate in the United States (U.S), particularly anti-immigration rhetoric, plays in shaping campus climates within the higher education context” and 

“we believe it is imperative to understand how campus climates of higher education institutions and undocumented students’ educational trajectories have been influenced under the Trump Era in Colorado” and 

“it is important to understand the immense stress college students experience as they navigate the negative political climate for immigrant communities and the impact of this socio-political climate may have on college environments across the country” and 

“there are few studies (Author) that capture shifts in campus climate under the Trump Era” and 

“we hope to reconceptualize how anti-immigration events, rhetoric, and action incite hostile and racially charged climates of fear for undocumented students and act as sites for reclamation of higher education rights designated as white property only.” 

Given your conceptual framework drawing upon Harris’ (1993) whiteness as property and the layout of your findings, I suggest you frame this paper around student experiences and the coercion of whiteness in campus climates. Of course, there are many ways to carve manuscripts out of large research projects and data, so my suggestion is merely one. 

 

Once you have narrowed the purpose of your manuscript, I suggest opening the paper with some relevant higher education literature alongside the problem with the “Trump Effect” to set the contexts for your argument rather than going directly into DACA specifically. I suggest moving the relevant specifics about DACA to your literature review. This will help situate your study as higher education research on college climate and more tightly align with the special issue’s focus. You can return to the areas of literature that you briefly reference in the introduction in your literature review.

 

The current stated purpose of your manuscript outlines two areas of foci: student experiences and student trajectories. I suggest you pick one to focus on for this manuscript in order to deepen your analysis. Similarly, in your methodology you present a large corpus of data that you draw from as evidence. Are you using all of this data to support your arguments within this manuscript, or are you only drawing from focus group data (per your opening sentence of your findings section, page 6, line 284)? If you are only drawing from focus group data, I would clearly state that and note that the focus groups were a part of a larger data collection effort for the full project. 

 

Your current literature review drawing from campus climates and student experiences is a good fit for your discussion of undocumented student experiences on campus. I suggest you move your section on imperialist reclamation to your conceptual framework and connect it to Harris’ whiteness as property. In combining the two as a conceptual framework, you will be able to better operationalize whiteness and imperialism within the context of your study. If you can design a visual to represent the constructs of your conceptual framework discussing whiteness as property and imperialistic reclamation, that will help readers understand those properties in your findings based on empirical evidence. Currently in your conceptual framework, you only briefly introduce the property functions of whiteness according to Harris (1993) but then you delve deeper into Ladson-Billings and Tate’s conceptualization of white privilege and whiteness. I suggest you reframe your introduction and front portion of your paper to reference Ladson-Billings and Tate rather than citing Harris alone as your conceptual framework. 

 

In your methodology, you list multiple data sources but some of the references to your methods within the paper vary and are unclear as to what you draw from in this specific manuscript. For example, in your findings section you specifically cite focus groups, but in your literature review you reference interviews and survey data. I suggest you clarify what methods were used for this specific manuscript, and include if those are a part of a larger project. If the study’s focus is on student experience, I suggest you offer a table with participant information relevant to the study tied to their pseudonyms. For example, their immigrant identities and campus type. This will help readers connect student experience to campus contexts. 

 

In the opening of your findings section, I suggest you clearly describe the constructs of whiteness and your conceptual framework that you saw in your findings. Empirical evidence of whiteness in higher education studies is relatively new and uncommon, so it is all the more important that you draw clear lines of reasoning between your conceptual understanding and argument about whiteness to evidence in your data. Introducing these as a sort of roadmap at the opening of your findings section will help clearly identify these for your readers and connect your conceptual framework and findings. I think the inclusion of data excerpts and analysis within your findings section is strong. I suggest extending your data excerpts further by connecting your analysis back to the theories you draw from in your conceptual framework. For example, how does Camilla’s quote (page 7, line 304) speak back to properties of whiteness or imperialistic reclamation? This will also help meld your discussion with your findings within each sub-section. 

 

In your discussion and implications section, I suggest discussing big-picture what this study informs and what it specifically means regarding the purpose of your manuscript and the theories you use. Once you clearly identify and define this manuscript’s purpose and conceptual framework, you can better return to these in your discussion and implications, and speak back to relevant higher education literature on campus climate.

 

Overall, I think your study is important, timely, and aligned with the special issue. However, I believe there are major revisions needed before this manuscript is ready for publication. I have made a few suggestions throughout my review on how to narrow and clarify the purpose of this manuscript, while making clear connections between theory and data. I am happy to review this paper again if it is resubmitted to the special issue after major revisions have been made regarding the scope of the authors’ purpose and argument. Once the paper is refocused, I can do a closer read of your use of whiteness as property and connections to data in your findings. Thank you again for the privilege of reading your manuscript!

 

General comments:

-If you keep “nativism” in your title, I suggest offering a definition in the introduction of the paper to help focus-in readers, and return to it within your paper. 

-Include more citations for your discussion of the Trump presidency in your introduction. After the citations from SPL, there are few citations offered as you discuss Trump’s immigration policies and treatment of asylum seekers (Page 1, lines 30-36).

-The last sentence of your introduction is a bit long (Page 2, lines 75-78). I suggest separating it into two clearer sentences.  

-Include the year for the Harris citation (Page 2, line 91)

-If one of your goals in this paper is to make an argument about whiteness as property on college campuses, I suggest connecting your conceptual framework drawing on Harris, 1993 to your introduction and purpose of the paper. 

-Page 10, Line 493: put quote in block format, and make sure all data excerpts are correctly formatted.

-Page 11, Line 531: add citations to your claims about whiteness on college campuses.

 

General grammatical revisions:

-Page 1, Line 11: comma after recipients

-Page 1, Line 13: swap their and influence

-Page 6, Line 288: run-on sentence

 

Author Response

REVIEWER 1;

• Narrowed the purpose of your manuscript,
• We narrowed our focus to just center on the voices of students and the usage of our conceptual framework
• We shifted the beginning of the paper to focus on the boarder issue of the Trump Effect and set up the context for our conceptual framing.

 

• Given your conceptual framework drawing upon Harris’ (1993) whiteness as property and the layout of your findings, I suggest you frame this paper around student experiences and the coercion of whiteness in campus climates. I suggest you move your section on imperialist reclamation to your conceptual framework and connect it to Harris’ whiteness as property. In combining the two as a conceptual framework, you will be able to better operationalize whiteness and imperialism within the context of your study
• We did a big overhaul of our conceptual framework to provide more clarity and alignment with the research study. We use Harris’ whiteness as property as the dominate explanation with Ladson Billings and Tate to supplement Harris. We hope the reviewers find more clarity in our revisions. We incorporated racist nativism within the discussion.
• Imperialistic reclamation is under the conceptual framework as per the reviewer comments

 

• Methodology you present a large corpus of data that you draw from as evidence. Are you using all of this data to support your arguments within this manuscript, or are you only drawing from focus group data (per your opening sentence of your findings section, page 6, line 284)? If you are only drawing from focus group data,
• We clearly in the methodology and at the beginning of the paper that only focus group data was used in this paper.
• We made a table you offer a table with participant information relevant to the study
• Findings: Introducing these as a sort of roadmap at the opening of your findings section will help clearly identify these for your readers and connect your conceptual framework and findings. I think the inclusion of data excerpts and analysis within your findings section is strong. I suggest extending your data excerpts further by connecting your analysis back to the theories you draw from in your conceptual framework.
  • We connect the data to whiteness as property and imperialistic reclamation
• Discussion and Implications: you can better return to these in your discussion and implications, and speak back to relevant higher education literature on campus climate.
• We return to the literature in the findings.

 

General comments:

-If you keep “nativism” in your title, I suggest offering a definition in the introduction of the paper to help focus-in readers, and return to it within your paper. 

• We offer a definition of racist nativism and articulate it more in the paper

-Include more citations for your discussion of the Trump presidency in your introduction. After the citations from SPL, there are few citations offered as you discuss Trump’s immigration policies and treatment of asylum seekers (Page 1, lines 30-36).

• We included more citations

-The last sentence of your introduction is a bit long (Page 2, lines 75-78). I suggest separating it into two clearer sentences. 

• Thank you for the suggestion

-Include the year for the Harris citation (Page 2, line 91)

• Added

-If one of your goals in this paper is to make an argument about whiteness as property on college campuses, I suggest connecting your conceptual framework drawing on Harris, 1993 to your introduction and purpose of the paper. 

• Added

-Page 10, Line 493: put quote in block format, and make sure all data excerpts are correctly formatted.

• Data excerpts formatted

-Page 11, Line 531: add citations to your claims about whiteness on college campuses.

• Added citations

 

Reviewer 2 Report

Thank you for the opportunity to review “The influence of the Trump Era on the Prevalence of White dominance on college campuses: How undocumented students experience the normalization of nativism.” The researchers use focus groups to explore how policy changes and anti-immigrant rhetoric, which were hallmarks of the Trump presidency, shaped undocumented students' experiences on college campuses. The research drew on closely related notions of imperialistic reclamation and whiteness as property and frameworks for the study. This study was situated in Colorado, a comparatively “immigrant-friendly” state. The findings show that students encountered symbolic and interpersonal instances of people reclaiming their whiteness, both on and off campus. These experiences also contributed to a heightened pressure to perform “white,” exemplified by achieving and sustaining academic excellence.

The study tackles important political issues related to a vulnerable population in U.S. higher education. The front end of the paper is particularly strong and cohesive. However, the rest of the paper could use some more detail and precision regarding methodology. I strongly believe the authors can address my criticism and contribute a very timely piece of scholarship that will influence policy and practice. Below are three “bigger-picture” feedback, and then minor comments follow.

Big-picture feedback

Clarify the “level” of analysis in your study with respect to a concept you draw on. The researchers suggest that previous scholarship on undocumented students has largely focused on individual-level characteristics and interactions (e.g., microaggressions). Thus, one of the many contributions of this paper is the expansion to consider more critically other layers, in the parlance of Urie Bronfenbrenner. However, is the anti-immigration rhetoric a meso- or macro-level phenomenon? Theoretically, how should we think about the directional “effects” of the different layers; what role do institutions play in moderating the impact of state and federal level policy and discourse (if at all)?

The role of private institutions was so intriguing, especially given the reference to Suarez Orozco et al. (2015) and how students attending private institutions felt relatively more supported than their otherwise similar peers attending public four-year universities and community colleges.  How should we think about private institutions in this study? Did they provide in-state subsidies as well? Did participants from private colleges in your focus groups feel more or less supported?

The discussion feels incomplete and lacks a clear connection to the scholarship presented on institutional differences and the Bronfenbrenner reference. In the discussion, I’d also like some thoughts on how this work can be generalized (if at all) to other contexts, such as less immigrant-friendly states (relating back to the urgency of this research)

Minor comments:

On page 1, document lines 20-24, I’d like a sentence connecting the K-12 statistics to higher education. The what extent can we extrapolate the survey results to an entirely different population; that of college students?

On page 1, document lines 38-41, I’d recommend also including that the policy environment hasn’t improved under the Biden administration, to further strengthen the urgency of this research.  

On page 3, line 106, I believe institutional is a typo.

On page 2, lines 47-48, I suggest referring to DACA as an executive memorandum, not an order.

On page 5, I’d encourage the authors to expand their discussion of the study context. The statistic presented are relatively out of data. Are there recent estimates of the undocumented/DACAmeneted population to help us understand to what share this population makes up in the state and what their college attendance rates are?

On page 6, I’d like some clarity on the methodology section. Clarify why you only present focus group findings here. I’d also like a quick summary of how you generated the semi-structured interviews for the focus groups based on the author’s previous study. I’d like some more detail and precision regarding the coding approach. Consider the following questions: How were” consistent and focused codes” created? What role does the theoretical framework play in your approach to coding? What did the comparison of data and codes look like between the authors (and potentially other team members)? What are the demographics of your sample? Were the focus groups the same people three times? Were the groups composed of different students from different institutions?

Regarding the findings, can you provide some clarity as to why most of the quotes are coming from Camila?

 

Author Response

We want to thank both reviewers for their thoughtful and insightful feedback on our manuscript. We took time to go through each reviewers’ comments and we detail how we addressed them in our manuscript.

REVIEWER 2:

Big-picture feedback.

Thus, one of the many contributions of this paper is the expansion to consider more critically other layers, in the parlance of Urie Bronfenbrenner. However, is the anti-immigration rhetoric a meso- or macro-level phenomenon?

• We do clarify that this in our literature review

Theoretically, how should we think about the directional “effects” of the different layers; what role do institutions play in moderating the impact of state and federal level policy and discourse (if at all)?

• We discuss the role of the in discussion section

The role of private institutions was so intriguing, especially given the reference to Suarez Orozco et al. (2015) and how students attending private institutions felt relatively more supported than their otherwise similar peers attending public four-year universities and community colleges.

• We mentioned that one limitation of our study was that we only had 1 student from a private institution.

In the discussion, I’d also like some thoughts on how this work can be generalized (if at all) to other contexts, such as less immigrant-friendly states (relating back to the urgency of this research)

• We added a sentence about the generalizability of this study in other contexts in line1439-1441

Minor comments:

On page 1, document lines 20-24, I’d like a sentence connecting the K-12 statistics to higher education. The what extent can we extrapolate the survey results to an entirely different population; that of college students?

• We added sentence about this (international students) in the first paragraph.

On page 1, document lines 38-41, I’d recommend also including that the policy environment hasn’t improved under the Biden administration, to further strengthen the urgency of this research.

• Added in line 41

On page 5, The statistic presented are relatively out of data. Are there recent estimates of the undocumented/DACAmeneted population to help us understand to what share this population makes up in the state and what their college attendance rates are?

• We updated the statistics of DACA recipients in the state of Colorado

I’d like some clarity on the methodology section. Clarify why you only present focus group findings here. I’d also like a quick summary of how you generated the semi-structured interviews for the focus groups based on the author’s previous study. I’d like some more detail and precision regarding the coding approach. Consider the following questions: How were” consistent and focused codes” created? What role does the theoretical framework play in your approach to coding? What did the comparison of data and codes look like between the authors (and potentially other team members)? What are the demographics of your sample? Were the focus groups the same people three times? Were the groups composed of different students from different institutions?

• We added more nuance to the coding approach and clarity to the focus groups.

Regarding the findings, can you provide some clarity as to why most of the quotes are coming from Camila?

• Thank you for this comment. We shifted and changed some of the quotes to be a bit more representative of other students.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for the opportunity to review your revised manuscript. I appreciate your responses to my comments and suggestions from my first review of your manuscript.

 

I think the revised opening of your manuscript is more succinct, and your definition of whiteness is more clear. I suggest you add Harris, 1993 to your citations discussing whiteness as property on line 49. This will also help connect your definition of whiteness to your discussion of whiteness in your conceptual framework. Thank you for adding your definition of racist nativism to your introduction. Following the definition on line 64, I suggest summarizing how racist nativism applies specifically to your study. The clarity you offer in sentence 104 between the Trump Effect and campus climate is clear. This is a great, simple revision that is effective.

 

The revisions to your conceptual framework greatly strengthens your manuscript. Great job re-working this section! I appreciate the connections you made between the conceptual framework tenets and the focus of your study within each subsection. Great, clear description of the foundations of imperialist reclamation and your application of the concept to your study on the Trump Effect. I suggest replacing the word “gaze” with “lens” when discussing how you used your conceptual framework as a researcher. 

 

Great job revising your methodology section to clarify that this manuscript reports on the focus group data from a large multi-institutional case study. You end the methodology section with a sentence about conducting the focus groups. I suggest moving this up towards the top of the section where you discuss data collection.

 

Good job adding analytic connections to your conceptual framework within your discussion of findings. Be sure to include citations for your references back to your conceptual framework and literature for each of the findings sections and discussions. For example, in your analytic summary at the end of the “Interpersonal” findings section there aren’t any citations. Throughout your findings section, I see references to Harris but not many references to Ladson-Billings & Tate or imperialist reclamation. See where you can weave these into your discussion. Your return to the undocufriendly campus ecology framework in your discussion section strengthens the connection between the front and back ends of your manuscript nicely.

 

Finally, throughout the paper you have minor grammatical and sentence errors. I listed some in my general comments below, but please do a careful read of the paper to check for long sentences, missing words in sentences, mismatches between singular and plural wording, and mismatches between subject and verbs.

 

Thank you again for the privilege of reading and reviewing your revised manuscript. Again, your research is important and timely - thank you for engaging in this work.

 

General Comments

-line 45: remove the comma after “whiteness”

-line 69: specify which racialized college students. Historically marginalized? White students are also racialized, but they are not the racialized group that anti-immigration and hate rhetoric target.

-line 94: sentence is unclear. Perhaps one of the “as” don’t need to be included?

-line 122: check the layout of this sentence grammatically. Perhaps add an “and” before “limited” and a comma after “opportunities” to help smooth the flow of the sentence?

-line 147: check the subject verb agreement between “climates” and “occurs”

-line 149: I suggest adding a comma after “policies”

-line 154: remove “more than likely” and change “perceive” to “perceived”

-line 156: it seems a word is missing after “also”

-line 171: change to “experience”

-line 281: change to past tense since you already collected and analyzed findings. So, “were attempts” 

-line 283: change to “considered”

-line 284: change to “Therefore, our paper contributes to”

-line 305: change to “large”

-line 328: change to “an inductive coding scheme.”

-line 329: change to “compare”

-line 330: replace comma with a period and make a new sentence beginning with “We then grouped codes together based on patterns in the data to identify focused codes.”

-line 331: change to “codes”

-line 332: change “gaze” to “lens” or “framework.” Remove “ and make the H lowercase. Change the period to a question mark at the end of the sentence.

-line 339: add citation for imperialist reclamation 

-line 397: change to “Trump” Add a comma after “elected” Add “to” after “attempted” I also suggest you break this sentence into two sentences.

-line 399: change “He” to “Carlos”

-line 405: change “into” to “to” and add a comma before “which”

-line 420: change to “points”

-line 426: add “but” before Antonio

-line 429: make the sentence more concise by rephrasing to “students’ statements”

-line 453: remove “about”

-line 463: change to “students”

-line 633: move sentence on limitation of the study to the methodology section

 

Author Response

Please see attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Thank you for engaging and responding to all my comments. You did a great job addressing each comment and I am satisfied with the changes.

Author Response

Thank you so much for all the helpful feedback you provided. Your insights were valuable to us.