A porous, morphing, and circulatory mode of self‐other: decolonizing identity politics by engaging transnational reflexivity

Abstract

As im/migrant researchers of color working and living in the USA, we begin this article by discussing how our own transnational selves and research have created tensions with the normalized use of socially constructed and theorized categories and differences in US qualitative research practices. We theorize an alternative reflexive mode of conceptualizing a researcher self that can illuminate more contextually engaging understanding and relationships between researcher and researched within our transnational research contexts. We argue that our reflexive approach to researcher self as non‐unitary I, circulatory mode of porous and shifting entities simultaneously fracturing and morphing into each other in relation to its changing webs of relationships and history, can bring different ways of understanding and working with the ever changing and interconnected global‐local cultural, social, and political conditions and contexts of education and research.

Keywords:

• circulatory self‐other
• reflexivity
• insider‐outsider positionality
• transnational research
• decolonizing methodologies

Notes

1. We use im/migrant to highlight tensions of categorizing ourselves between immigrant, emigrant, and migrant. The names of immigrant and emigrant denote whose perspectives we are prioritizing while we are always both immigrants and emigrants at the same time. Our more or less stable living conditions in the USA also create a tension for us to claim a migrant and/or Third World identity. Later in the paper, we discuss how this necessary process of naming – situating us in our research project stimulated a new theorizing practice.