Firestone Medal: Sofia Miranda Avila Jamesson ('21)

Photo of Sofia Avila

June 13, 2021

Congratulations to Sofia Miranda Avila Jamesson (Class of 2021) for being awarded a Firestone Medal for Excellence in Undergraduate Research for her Honors thesis, Fallouts of Deportations in Texas: Analyzing the impact of large-scale workplace raids on academic performance. Sofia was advised by Michelle Jackson and Beka Guluma (Sociology).

Sofia’s thesis provides persuasive evidence that a large-scale workplace immigration raid in Allen, Texas, negatively affected the test scores of Hispanic students in proximity to the raid, by comparing before and after scores in the Allen school district with those of students in control districts that did not experience a workplace raid. The thesis demonstrates significant effects on both reading and math scores, and shows in addition that the effect was stronger for schools closer to the raid. Her thesis shows both a mastery of social data analysis, and the potential for difference-in-difference techniques to uncover educational effects with important implications for immigration enforcement policy.