Mitzia Eliovani
Martinez
Castellanos
Doctoral student interested in the intersection of immigration law and criminal justice, law and identity, and immigrant liberation.
Areas of interest:
  • Legal consciousness
  • Legal violence
  • Legalization

About The Scholar

2000's
mitzia as a kid
Primary School
Mitzia was born and raised in Mexico. She attended primary school there until fifth grade. At the age of nine, she, her two siblings, and her parents migrated to the United States, where they ultimately settled in San Jose, California, a city Mitzia holds close to her heart.
2010 - 2014
mitzia as a kid
High School Education
Mitzia graduated Valedictorian of her high school class. The consequences of Mitzia's undocumented status crystallized in high school. She excelled in the International Baccalaureate program, an advanced learning curriculum, yet her college counselors lacked the necessary training to support undocumented students and discouraged her from applying to college. She was also rejected from various college preparation programs and prestigious scholarships because she didn’t have a social security number. She felt capable of attending college but was denied the tools to tackle the application process. A Latinx teacher in her high school provided her with the personalized mentorship she needed. With his help, Mitzia became one of the first undocumented students in her high school to receive a full merit-based scholarship to UC Berkeley.
2014 - 2018
mitzia as a kid
College Education
At UC Berkeley, she earned two Bachelor's degrees in Legal Studies and African American Studies (AAS). At the time, Mitzia hoped to enroll in law school after college so she held an internship position as a Legal Advocate at Immigrants Rising. In this position, she was trained to screen undocumented people for eligibility for possible pathways to citizenship. In her senior year, she enrolled in the AAS senior capstone course to pursue an honors thesis, which documented anti-blackness, colorism, and ignorance of Afro-Latinidad in the Latinx community. Her thesis and exceptional academic record led her to become the 2020 Valedictorian of the AAS graduating class.
2018 - 2020
mitzia as a kid
Professional Experience
Mitzia began working at Ceres Policy Research immediately after graduation, a woman-led community research organization in Oakland, California. She helped found the immigration research unit at Ceres, where she conducted national and bi-national research projects to challenge practices of the crimmigration system – a legal collaboration between immigration law and the criminal justice system that undermines immigrants’ due process rights and the inalienable rights granted to them by the Constitution. You can find the reports on this work in the Publications tab. She spent two years at Ceres before going back to school to pursue a doctorate degree.
2020 - Present
mitzia as a kid
Graduate School
Mitzia is now a third-year doctoral student at the Jurisprudence and Social Policy (JSP) Program at Berkeley Law School. She was awarded the Chancellor’s Fellowship for Graduate Study, a prestigious fellowship award for highly qualified entering doctoral students who will enhance the diversity of the graduate student population at Berkeley. She was also chosen as the recipient of the Mentored Research Award, a fellowship that assists diverse doctoral students in acquiring sophisticated research skills by working under faculty mentorship on their own pre-dissertation research.
Mitzia's research examines whether and how legalization affects the relationships and identities of undocumented people.
Learn more