Intra-participant and inter-analyst cacophony: working the hyphen between modalities using provocative reflexivity

ABSTRACT

Multimodal psychological research highlights the benefit of using complementary approaches to the phenomenological study of lived experience. Rather than focus on any individual method, this study attempts to concentrate on the transition, or hyphen, between them, as a place for reflexivity, ethics, and theory. Participants were 14 adults, recruited from ‘New York Community College’ and ‘New Jersey Community College’ in the U.S., who engaged in focus groups where they completed two activities: drawing a map of their personal journey to the college or of their self-identity, and their definitions for the immigration-related terms illegal and undocumented. Results demonstrated that journey and identity maps contained obstructive and supportive elements, and that the definitions reflected differential cognitive and emotional elements. However, focusing on the transition between these two activities revealed that whereas most participants viewed illegal and undocumented as different, participants who noted many more obstacles reported that the terms had both different but also similar qualities. Implications are discussed with a pivot towards the psychological link between methods as a generative space for future theoretical and conceptual work.

KEYWORDS:

• Reflexivity
• mapping
• multimodality
• decolonial
• feminist

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank Michelle Fine and Wendy Lutrell for their insightful guidance on an earlier review of this manuscript, as well as Joanna Beltrán Girón for her enabling our team collaboration. Most importantly, we thank the students and academic institutions for the privilege of their time, in allowing us to document their stories.

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Notes on contributors

David A. Caicedo

David A. Caicedo, Ph.D., is Associate Professor and Co-Coordinator of the Psychology program at the Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC) within the City University of New York (CUNY). As a researcher, his work examines the language and discourse on immigration, political ideology, and the interaction between community, policy, and attitudes. As a faculty member, his work centers on teaching and mentoring future scholars and scientists through courses in Research Methods, Social Psychology, and Personality Psychology, as well as through several state and federally-funded research programs offered at BMCC.

Andrea Nikté Juarez Mendoza

Andrea Nikté Juárez Mendoza (she/her/ella) is an NYC based Guatemalan scholar-activist, artist and organizer from San Francisco California, whose work centers on community-driven change. Andrea’s current research looks at immigration, family separation, dehumanization, decolonial feminisms, social movements, and scholar/activism. She has worked as a translator in detention centers with the Feerick Center for Social Justice and as an organizer and researcher with the APA, Vera Center for Justice, CUNY and the Public Science Project on local, state-wide, and national projects documenting and archiving immigration experiences.

Miguel Pinedo

Dr. Pinedo’s research primarily investigates how immigration enforcement and control policies contribute to existing racial/ethnic health disparities related to (1) substance misuse and associated harms (e.g., poor mental health; HIV risk) and (2) substance use treatment utilization among Latinos. Using both quantitative and qualitative methods, his research expands the focus from individual-level factors that influence health and underscores the importance of immigration policies in shaping the health behaviors, risk practices, and health outcomes of Latinos, both immigrants and non-immigrants (i.e., US-born). He was awarded the National Award of Excellence in Research by a New Investigator by the National Hispanic Science Network in 2020, and was awarded an R01 research grant proposal by the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism to investigate barriers that contribute to disparities in alcohol treatment. Dr. Pinedo earned his PhD in Global Health from the University of California, San Diego and previously earned his Master in Public Health from the University of California, Berkeley.