Avowing as healing in qualitative inquiry: exceeding constructions of normative inquiry and confession in research with undocumented youth

Abstract

This article problematizes the role of the interview as a methodological strategy that loses its easy replication when employed in studies with undocumented youth. We raise questions about the contingencies of conducting qualitative interviews with undocumented youth – what does it mean leverage the interview-event as a space of healing for them? What does it mean to recognize, or potentially mis-recognize one’s identity in the context of a research interview? How might inquiry function in exploring the uncertainties of an avowed identity and contribute not to normalization but to healing and justice? To engage such questions, we specifically examine the implications of interview practices as a dangerous (and productive) site where concerns of confession entangle with the potential for avowal as a resistive participatory practice. This paper argues that the confessional interview offers a moment of advocacy and healing through the avowal of their experience occupying undocumented identities.

Keywords:

• Avowal
• confession
• qualitative interview
• foucault
• undocumented youth

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 All names in this article are pseudonyms.

2 We thank Alonso Reyna Rivarola for introducing this term to us, which refers to the specific grassroots knowledge of undocumented scholars and persons.

3 We aim here to use terms such as problematize and critique in a productive manner aligned with our Foucauldian orientation. For example, Foucault (1988) explains, ‘A critique is not a matter of saying that things are not right as they are’. It is a matter of pointing out on what kinds of assumptions, what kinds of familiar, unchallenged, unconsidered modes of thought, the practices that we accept rest. Criticism is a matter of flushing out that thought and trying to change it: to show that things are not as self-evident as we believed, to see that what is accepted as self-evident will no longer be accepted as such. Practising criticism is a matter of making facile gestures difficult (p. 154).

4 Certainly, authors from an array of fields, especially queer theory have engaged with the notion of avowal (Sifuentes-Jauregui, 2014 is an excellent example of this), many of whom employ the work of Michel Foucault in their analysis. However, our interest here lies in examining avowal within the auspices of an interview-event and extending questions regarding inquiry practices more specifically.

5 Throughout, we invoke the moniker of the ‘conventional interview’ as a means to register notions of interview techniques and assumptions most often displayed in textbooks and taught in classes that are procedural. These techniques and assumptions are thus replicated in research studies, becoming normative and invoked without question in empirical articles, especially within the field of education.

6 For obvious reasons, such a scenario remains problematic for those cultures that do not adhere to claims of a pure or complete Self, i.e. transnational migrant identities (Aarsand & Aarsand, 2017).

7 One example of more recent debates relates to posthuman approaches to inquiry. While beyond the scope of this article, we note that these larger debates in the field will eventually impact conducting research. Some in the field of qualitative research have even turned to consider nonhuman/post human objects on par with human participants, a move that most often champions a flattened ontological orientation that remains puzzling to scholars who foreground the ethical dimension of their inquiry among human populations. This post-human approach potentially displaces ethical stances that foreground consideration of humans (or, ‘the human’).

8 In this sense, it might be more honest to revert to referencing ‘interview subjects’ and not ‘participants’ – in a conventional sense one is subject-to the interview-confession.

9 Since this article is primarily conceptual, we do not provide a traditional empirical format for the article. However, data were collected from 2015 to 2018, and the sources included participant-observations (+700 hours), semi-structured interviews (N = 63), and focus groups with undocumented youth (see, Rodriguez, 2020b). The undocumented youth in this article were interviewed by Sophia three-six times during the study. Interviews were initially semi-structured, and subsequently open-ended and responsive to youths desires, experiences, and aspirations. Interviews occurred in school and community spaces, under trees, driving to appointments, and ranging from brief check-ins between classes to longer two hours discussions.

10 Since our focus here is to theorize the interview-event space through Foucault’s notions of confession and avowal, we elected not delve into the intricacies of the immigration literature. However, for an understanding of current issues related to undocumented youth, see, Gonzales, 2011, 2016; Gonzales & Chavez, 2012). While all immigrant students, regardless of their immigration status have a right to K-12 education form the Supreme Court case Plyler v. Doe (1982), not all students are eligible for Obama’s initiative of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (D.A.C.A.).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sophia Rodriguez

Sophia Rodriguez is an assistant professor in the College of Education at the University of Maryland, College Park. Her research examines immigration policy and its effect on undocumented youth in K–12 settings, and how school-based personnel such as educators and school social workers promote equity for undocumented students.

Aaron M. Kuntz

Aaron M. Kuntz is the Frost Professor of Education and Human Development at Florida International University. His research focuses on developing “materialist methodologies” through engaged deliberation with critical theory, relational materialism, and poststructuralism.