‘Caution, we have power’: Resisting the ‘school-to-sweatshop pipeline’ through participatory artistic praxes and critical care

ABSTRACT

How might participatory creative praxes make visible a politics of critical care and new imaginaries for resisting the ‘school-to-sweatshop pipeline’? Drawing upon arts-based participatory action research processes led by the urgent concerns of young people of color based in Salt Lake City, Utah, we consider the role of cultural production in providing a social and shared context for rearticulating undocumented students’ everyday experiences negotiating the ‘production of illegality’ and racialized exclusions in school. Attending to participatory creative praxis, we explore how the collective act of art-making generates possibilities to forge solidarities through 'cariño conscientizado', a critically conscious care praxis that seeks to dismantle structural injustices. We conclude raising questions about collective creative praxis as acts of resistance and refusal that take seriously the agency of communities to spark justice for ourselves.

KEYWORDS:

• Immigration
• critical care
• education
• young people
• participatory action research
• creative praxis
• school-to-sweatshop pipeline

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Wendy Luttrell and Victoria Restler for their generous work editing this beautiful special issue! Many thanks to the reviewers for their extremely helpful comments. Much appreciation to Rachel Pain and Ruth Raynor for the invitation to present a piece of this work at Newcastle University. We dedicate this essay to undocumented immigrants everywhere who are engaged in the struggle for recognition and justice. We hold in our hearts Matt Bradley (RIP 1970–2012), a passionate educator, committed activist, critical scholar, and co-founder of the Mestizo Arts & Activism Collective.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Caitlin Cahill is an Associate Professor of Urban Geography & Politics at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, New York. Caitlin engages in critical PAR with communities focused on the everyday intimate experiences of neoliberal racial capitalism, specifically as it concerns gentrification, immigration, education, and zero tolerance/policing policies.

David Alberto Quijada Cerecer is an Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies at Saint Mary’s College of California. His research interests include inter-cultural/ethnic youth alliances, cultural citizenship, feminist ethnographic methods, and youth participatory action research.

Alonso R. Reyna Rivarola is the Director of the Dream Center and a doctoral student in the Department of Sociology at the University of Utah. Growing up undocumented in Utah, his academic, research and professional interests are found in the raced-gendered intersections of education, labor, and immigration within the United States context.

José Hernández Zamudio is an Associate Instructor in the Office of Undergraduate Studies and doctoral student in the Department of Education, Culture, and Society at the University of Utah. His research areas of interest include early college education, race, class and gender.

Leticia Alvarez Gutiérrez is an Associate Professor in the Department of Education, Culture and Society at the University of Utah. She is a critical community engaged scholar who teaches and mentors linguistically and culturally diverse students, working extensively with societally marginalized young people, teacher educators and teachers who strive to transform education. She directs the Westside Pathways and is faculty advisor to Mestizo Arts and Activism (MAA) Collective.

ORCID

Alonso R. Reyna Rivarola http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2275-9355