Jesse Self

Jesse Self didn’t realize that he was destined to be a scholar-advocate. He just knew that he wanted to help undocumented immigrants and former prisoners on parole as best he could. 

In Chicago, Self was already working with both of these populations, but his efforts were directed toward giving practical assistance to individuals, not the theoretical connections that link these populations through a shared sense of legal precarity. When his social work began intersecting with the rapidly changing political landscape impacting immigrant communities, he enrolled in SSA’s Advanced Standing Master of Arts Program in Social Work and Social Welfare, following the advice of faculty mentors from his undergraduate days at Northeastern Illinois University.

New master’s degree in hand and continuing his work, he soon found himself wrestling with complex policy issues surrounding Deferred Action for  Childhood Arrivals (DACA), state violence, racialized marginalization, criminal law, social justice, and the human and legal rights of immigrant populations. To understand the dynamics of these large socio-cultural and economic forces in the American political landscape, he determined that, once  again, he needed to return to school. This time, he would seek a doctorate. 

For him, the University of Chicago was always his top choice, as it offered the kind of interdisciplinary programs that made it possible for him to engage with crucial foundational connections. This is not to say that his acceptance into the SSA's Doctoral Program was a foregone conclusion. The first time he  applied to the PhD program, his application was waitlisted. He was admitted after he reapplied the following year. 

The  trait  of  persistence, which characterizes his life path in general, has paid off. In addition to receiving the full funding extended to all students in SSA’s Doctoral Program, he received two research grants, one from the UChicago Pozen Family Center for Human Rights and another from the Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture to support his dissertation research.

Titled “Liminal Lives: Comparing Experiences of Legal Precarity among Immigrants, Parolees, and Their Mixed-Status Families,” the dissertation is being directed by Assistant Professor Angela S. García, whose own work in immigrant rights and immigration law aligns well with his own research interests.

His research on the subject of state legal violence was directly informed by his interdisciplinary graduate coursework. “Out of all the classes I’ve taken  in  my life,” he  recalls, “there are a small handful that jump out at me as being above and beyond all the rest. Three of these classes were at SSA.” They are “Informal Helping Systems in Low Income Communities,” taught by Professor Julia Henly, as well as two courses taught by Associate Professor William Sites: “Political Processes in Policy Formulation” and “Theory in Research.”

“Each of these three classes had a significant impact on my thinking and, in many ways, fundamentally changed the way I view the social world, allowing me to understand connections across systems and substantive areas that  are usually studied in academic  silos,” Self reflects.  In particular, he notes, it was Site’s theory class that reoriented his approach. Along similar lines, he also singled out the encouragements given by George Herbert Jones Distinguished Service Professor Jeanne C. Marsh to make use of theory. “Without actively engaging with theory,” he observes, “I would not be able to make the  connections between the immigration and carceral systems that guide my own research.”  

This is also true of the abundance of life and work experience he brings to his candidacy for the PhD. His path towards a doctorate has neither been obvious nor linear: among other things, he is the first in his family to attend a four-year college. Yet, in many ways, this is why SSA’s interdisciplinary approach is right for his development as a researcher, advocate, and scholar. “The faculty really and truly do not want to produce cookie-cutter replicas of themselves,” Self exclaims. “They want you to find your own area of research, and help you figure out how to do it well.”