In this thesis, I conduct a transnational analysis of the racialized hierarchies I observed during my research at La Clínica, a midwifery school and birth center on the U.S.-Mexico border. The discourse surrounding La Clínica couches the border space and the clinic in benevolent terms, but interviews with students of color reveal complicated racial and class politics that mediate the clinic and their experiences learning and working there. Students of color are thus motivated to form and create varying modalities of agency in order to define their experiences on their own terms, to express gratitude, and as a vehicle for survival in a predominantly white institution.