“I’ve never cried with a stranger before”: pedagogies of renewal and research dilemmas with/by undocuscholars

Issues of immigration and documentation permeate institutional policies, implicate academic, employment, and transportation spaces, structure access to and use of informational resources, as well as sculpt the contours of individual, familial and communal experiences. The undocumented experience in the United States is a complex and layered phenomenon that necessitates scholarly discourse on the relationship between immigrant youth, documentation, and bureaucratic institutions, especially schools, to advance liberatory and just research, policy, and practice.

Contexts of reception for undocumented immigrant students are critical to understand access to resources and belonging. Researchers have asserted that immigrants to the United States face unwelcoming contexts of reception (Portes & Rumbaut, 2006), and they can be affected by discrimination and racism (Suarez-Orozco & Suarez-Orozco, 2001; Suarez-Orozco et al., 2011). Schools, as local contexts of reception (Golash-Boza & Valdez, 2018), can temper societal exclusion and build social capital among immigrant students or reinforce divisions (Gleeson & Gonzales, 2012; Stanton-Salazar, 2004). Students may feel stressed, or perceive that it is too risky to discuss immigration status (Dabach, 2015). To date, research on the experiences of undocumented young people shows the barriers they face due to legal status as well as how they navigate postsecondary education and engage in political activism (Dabach et al., 2018; Gonzales, 2011; 2016; Gonzales et al., 2015). Further, a growing body of research has examined undocumented children’s experiences in K-12 schools, including student-teacher relationships, knowing rights, and stressors caused by fears about deportation as increases in Immigration Customs and Enforcement persist (Ee & Gándara, 2020; Rodriguez & McCorkle, 2020). While many diverse and committed researchers are engaging with these concerns, less is documented by individuals who have strong connections, familial or communal, to the undocumented and/or mixed-status community in relation to conducting research with this population.

Our aim in this special issue is two-fold. On the one hand, we wish to share research on the sensitive topics related to undocumented immigration, and the dilemmas that arise in conducting research about sensitive immigration and education topics. On the other hand, we emphasize a gap related to who is researching this topic and how they navigate the personal and professional parameters involved. Thus, in this issue we are augmenting the voices of undocuscholars alongside critical researchers with long-standing, reflexive commitments in/with the community, as relationships are often central and used to make sense of undocumented youth experiences (Abrego, 2019; Abrego & Negrón-Gonzales, 2020; Rodriguez, 2020b). This is a key contribution of this special issue: the methodological— both personal and professional—dilemmas of undocuscholars and critical researchers with long-standing investments in the undocumented community and how we navigate the vulnerability and answerability of engaging in this research and teaching.

In our own efforts as researchers with connections to the immigrant community, we continually interrogate our relationships (Rodriguez, 2020a). In conversations with participants and community members over the years, we have learned about the tensions of researching, and making visible, a community that is treated as invisible or at times prefers to remain in the shadows of society due to the significant surveillance they encounter (Arriaga, 2017; Rodriguez, 2020b; Verma et al., 2017). Making decisions about what and how to write with this community is a deeply emotional experience, and one that we tread lightly with our privileges as citizens. The title of this special issue, “I’ve never cried with a stranger,” reflects our emotional investment, as well as the tensions inherent in our statuses of differences and belonging that enter into our fieldwork, mentoring, and teaching relationships. Despite our longstanding activism and organizing within the undocumented community, there remains boundaries between our experiences as citizens researching with and about undocumented youth experiences, and in our pedagogical encounters with our students interested in immigration and education research. In Rodriguez’s research for the last decade spanning major urban cities and the rural southeast, undocumented youth have acknowledged the fear and possibility of navigating their status and participating in research by articulating, ‘Where do I belong?’ (Arriaga & Rodriguez, 2021) and noting, how being a part of a research project may offer a ‘platform’ for sharing their experiences. For example, an undocumented youth in Rodriguez’s and Kuntz’s (this issue) article explained, ‘I feel like the main reason I wanted to share my experiences in your research context was because I'm seeking justice – setting a platform, to encourage others to do the same because that way we are bound to make great changes!’ (p. 11). She perceived it as an opportunity for healing as she navigated her ‘undocumented life.’

Blum has concerned herself with the ways pedagogy in higher education can function to make her, with her students, become more reflective about their whiteness and institutionalized whiteness, acquire more conciencia about immigrants, and develop a praxis that will dismantle White supremacy, recognizing that this requires deep, unsettling emotional work (Blum, 2015; Blum & De la Piedra, 2010). Incorporating a critical neo-abolitionist pedagogy and challenging our self-affirming white nativism oftentimes breeds student anger and resentment and subsequent poor teaching evaluations. It’s a slippery slope to try to navigate and a high risk to undertake. Blum admits that she often treads lightly, and by doing so, can end up reinforcing or reproducing the system that she seeks to dismantle. While we know that justice and systemic change rarely comes from an academic article, we argue that showcasing grassroots knowledge with and from undocumented members of communities, as well as undocuscholars with relationships in the community, are a central component of engaging in socially just research and teaching. Thus, we center undocumented young peoples’ voices and scholars with direct connections to the community as a way to extend the platform and to challenge researchers to lean into the discomfort and vulnerability that accompanies conducting research with the undocumented community in a way that is answerable to them (Arriaga, this issue; Patel, 2016). We also charge the critical citizen scholar-teacher to (re-)consider and explore our emotional boundaries and discomforts as we teach about qualitative research or immigration and attempt to decolonize our pedagogies and pursue pedagogies of renewal.

We call for undocuepistemologies—undocumented ways of knowing—and lived experience as a form of theorizing in this special issue. We acknowledge the various theoretical tools that scholars use to make sense of the liminal, contradictory, relational, subjugated, or even abject experiences of undocumented communities (Abrego, 2019; Abrego & Negrón-Gonzales, 2020; Aguilar, 2019; Gonzales & Chavez, 2012; Reyna Rivarola, 2017; Rodriguez & Kuntz, this issue). Aguilar (2019), in developing a theoretical framework for writing about undocuscholars’ experiences, acknowledges the need for researchers to reflect upon their relationship to the undocumented community. At times, as researchers, the tension remains to publish about the topics and challenges facing the community as outsiders or to engage and participate with the community in ways that are useful, if not healing, for them. And as critical scholars, we aimed to have this issue reflect the ‘acompañados of UndocuCrit scholars,’ which means to create knowledge that is accessible and relatable for our communities by exposing it in such a way that matches their experiences (Aguilar, 2019). In this conscious effort, we certainly fall short and continue to try to reconcile our work and the experiences of the community by showcasing as best as we could the ‘undocumented experiences, knowledge, and [. .] the creation of stories exposing the complex, varied, and at times contradicting realities of our communities’ in order to ‘affirm[s] that the stories belong to those who live them’ (Aguilar, 2019, p. 157). Each of the articles engage in this way of knowing and conveying research processes and reflexivity.

This special issue on immigration and education explores the lives of undocumented youth in the United States, offering scholarship from former and current DACAmented scholars and undocuscholars alike, who unpack their undocuepistemologies, including pedagogical renderings. Following Aguilar (2019) and Sepúlveda (2011), we envision this collection of articles as a pedagogical tool for ourselves and researchers. As always in qualitative research, we are outsiders and insiders, so this issue includes those deeply connected to the undocumented community but also those who experience boundaries due to citizenship and immigration status or who formerly did. With the perspectives of outsiders learning about the undocumented community and insider scholars who come from this community, pedagogies of conflict, healing and renewal surface as these researchers come to terms with methodological and epistemological challenges.

These researchers-activists write against the negative discourses perpetuated by the media and US political leaders with the goal of dismantling unjust and inhumane immigration policies. Their narratives educate and enable us to hear and understand the lived reality of those who have been subjected to these policies. Epistemologies of healing were inherent in the methodologies of this qualitative fieldwork.

The first articles in this methodological collection highlight some of the insider-outsider dilemmas of undocumented and non-undocumented researchers as they negotiate their own statuses and reflect on their relationships with their undocumented participants. Felicia Arriaga provides an autoethnographic and retrospective analysis of the complex identity politics that she negotiates studying her North Carolina county’s ICE and law enforcement partnership with the 287(g) program. She details her insider-outsider researcher identity serving on the sheriff’s ‘steering committee’ while belonging to the community that this program criminalizes. Arriaga reveals with great sensitivity her struggles with answerability, knowing that her community will continue to be impacted by 287(g). In addition, she goes further to illustrate the epistemological value of answerability as stewarding ‘productive and generative spaces that allow for finding knowledge’ (Patel, 2016, p. 79). Her answerability relies on her cultural intuition, a ‘homegrown episteme,’ which kept her attuned to her accountability to her local community—in activism and advocacy en familia. Arriaga’s work contributes new ways of looking at knowledge and practices about community participation action research.

In the second article, Alessandra Bazo Vienrich provides rich detail on her ambivalence in managing her immigrant identities while conducting fieldwork with undocumented college students and recent graduates in North Carolina and Massachusetts. We read about the factors that inform her decision to go from nondisclosure to disclosure, as her own statuses shifted in the field from undocumented to DACA-benefitted while DACA immigrants were at the center of political debates (2013–2017). Using the concept of ‘twoness’ from W.E.B. Dubois’ ‘double consciousness,’ Bazo Vienrich, discusses her challenges of being in spaces where she is recognized either by her educated Latina identity or by her racialized undocumented identity, but rarely as both. She disrupts static epistemologies by incorporating Anzaldua’s (1987) concept of ‘mestizo consciousness’ as her analytical lens to contest the dichotomies she traverses that include native born and migrant, ‘legal’ and undocumented/liminally documented, as well as belongingness and otherness. Finally, Bazo Vienrich’s ‘coming out’ and acknowledging a shared identity becomes a way to ‘level the field’ in terms of researcher-participant power dynamics.

Next, Cinthya Salazar explores her insider-outsider relationship with her undocumented undergraduate students and co-researchers while conducting participatory action research (PAR). Salazar provides critical moments of reflection about her sharing with her co-researchers the history of her own statuses from being undocumented in her arrival to the US to becoming a US citizen. She shows how her commitment to humanizing methodologies, such as PAR, goes beyond the fieldwork by presenting critical conversations with her student researchers about trust. Her conversations include compensation for their labor, ensuring that they feel valued and not exploited, a call to speak candidly about unforeseen circumstances that may impede their fulfilling research duties as well as community agreements. In sum, Salazar suggests ways outside researchers can cultivate genuineness, reciprocity, and humanity with inside researchers that respects their agency and works to challenge academic power dynamics and form horizontal relationships.

Alonso Reyna Rivarola, an undocumented and DACA-benefitted scholar and Gerardo López, a non-undocumented immigrant scholar, interrogate settler colonialism and traditional epistemologies. Using a dialogue approach, they discuss power, voice, representation, authenticity, ethics, exploring and challenging the nature of self/other in research and the academy’s research purpose. One of the issues highlighted is the dismissal and de-centering of undocumented immigrant scholars and their scholarship due to being viewed as ‘illegals,’ while privileging and centering the work of non-undocumented immigrant scholars. In addition, researchers commodify and capitalize on undocumented immigrant research for self-promotion. Reyna Rivarola and López interrogate the researcher-participant relationship and the narrative co-building that takes place, questioning the vested interests and what happens once the researcher has finished extracting knowledge. Reyna Rivarola and López call on researchers to consider the bigger narrative they are a part of and the dangers of perpetuating settler colonialism. They argue for a shared humanity with the participants at the forefront of all research and research that goes beyond the story— one that aims to achieve greater changes in societal structures.

Sophia Rodriguez and Aaron Kuntz’s article problematizes the role of the interview as a methodological strategy, calling it the interview-event. They critique the normalized epistemological assumptions about how knowledge is produced, unequally distributing the power between the interviewer and the interviewee. Using a post-structuralist approach, specifically Foucault’s notions of confession and avowal, they argue against this type of confessing, a procedural interview-event that extracts knowledge primarily for the researcher’s purpose and advocate for avowal, one that creates a space of justice and healing on the participant’s terms. By linking the otherwise bifurcated claims of epistemology, ontology, and methodology, Rodriguez and Kuntz challenge researchers, especially of and with vulnerable populations, to consider the productive potential of the enactment of the interview-event beyond representing or empowering the silenced ‘voice’ and revealing hidden ‘truths.’ Using empirical data with undocumented youth to explore conventions of confession and avowal, they center undocuvoices in the interview-event, advocating for an actual relationship-bound exchange of information that involves questions, responses, rebuttals, debates, and assertions between the interviewer and interviewee. They illustrate the potential of avowal to move beyond fixed identities, to disrupt and resist the ways governing institutions have historically and juridically defined the undocumented. Moreover, they explore the contingencies and ambiguities in the interview process itself, whereby the interviewer and interviewee are unsettled as the processes of meaning making are, creating potential openings for avowal, of expressions of identity (albeit incomplete), experiences and healing. Thus, the acts of avowal refuse normative claims.

Lastly, this special issue ends with pedagogical reflective essay where Denise Blum and her graduate student co-authors, Erin Davis, Kari Gibson, Rexi Phillips, Annette Stanly Jeyaraj, and Bailey Winters, deconstruct whiteness and emotions in a graduate course entitled, ‘Immigration and Education.’ Blum decided to make it an experiential learning course by coupling readings with guest speakers, field trips, and personal interviews with undocumented and DACA benefitted immigrants. Co-authors, Davis, Gibson, Phillips, Stanly Jeyaraj, and Winters discuss their emotional experiences and cognitive shifts that resulted in them being more immigrant responsive. However, they also reveal how their classroom learning experience only scratched the surface on examining hegemonic whiteness and status quo structures that continue to disadvantage, if not harm, undocumented immigrants. The authors advocate for a neo-abolitionist pedagogy and cultivating a ‘third space’ for processing students’ emotions. In this vein, they highlight what pedagogical renewal can look like, making necessary connections to systems of power and resulting inequities, as well as strategizing ways of dismantling racist structures to support social change, healing and humanity.

What these collected papers offer are the disorienting dilemmas of methodological ethics and practices of the undocumented and non-documented insider-outsider, researcher-participant, and interviewer-interviewee. From the classroom to the research field, instructors and researchers have a professional obligation to become more aware of the power dynamics and consider who is being centered and decentered, and enact thoughtful practices that provide agency, justice, and healing to the undocumented and those of mixed statuses, who have historically and contemporarily been marginalized. In research and teaching contexts, where detailed planning is expected, we must also learn to expect ambiguity and contingencies to unsettle the settler colonialism that is inherent in the structure of the academy and commit to humanizing methodologies that allow immigrant epistemological claims to flourish.

Sophia Rodriguez 
Teaching Learning Policy and Leadership, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA
[email protected]

Denise Blum
School of Educational Studies, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK, USA
[email protected]