Critical Reflections on Challenging Researcher Privilege in Doing Research on Undocumented Korean American Youth

• In Event: 53.081 - Roundtable Session 21
  In Roundtable Session: 53.081-4 - Positionality on Trial: Examining Global Tensions of Privilege While Performing Humanizing Research With Minoritized Populations

Abstract

My research investigates the activism of undocumented Korean American youth and its implication in a neoliberal state that is (re)constructed at the intersection of legal status, education, race, ethnicity, age, socio-economic status, and power. Considering that oppression is “not a singular process or a binary political relation, but is better understood as constituted by multiple, converging, or interwoven systems” (Carastathis, 2014, pp. 304), it is significant to pay attention to marginalized people’s social, geographic, historical, and cultural location (Weber, 2001) and its intertwined linkage to veiled power.

“… the logical division between young and old is also a question of power. Classification by age (but also by sex and, of course, class…) always means imposing limits and producing an order to which each person must keep himself in place” (Bourdieu, 1993, pp. 94). Bourdieu’s critical argument about the discourse on youth is still valid as, based on the classical belief, youths have been considered innocent, immature, and vulnerable and in this regard, they have been expected to be moral, educated or trained, and protected from any possible risk or pollution from society.

In this regard, my research highlights the subjectivity of young people’s attempts to resist these traditional norms and framework surrounding them and, at the same time, it pays attentions to a reflexive and ethical approach of researcher to youth that this research requires considering youth rights and safety to protect themselves, which have been sometimes easily ignored and less respected by adults.

In addition, I examine the issue of positionality that I have experienced in my fieldwork conducted at Korean American immigrant organizations in Los Angeles and New York with 67 youth for the last three years. My positionality has brought continuous dilemma and tension of “(not) being a native” and “too foreign to be a researcher” since I initiated the fieldwork. I was not only neither undocumented nor Korean American but also one of the international students who freely cross the border with the expensive “F-1 student visa” that were considered as the people standing in antipode. These given conditions have sometimes situated me as a researcher whose capability to understand or engage with the lived experience of my informants and the United States society is insufficient or doubtful.

Based on self-reflections on these competing positionalities of myself as a researcher, in this paper, I argue that “not being a native” can be transformed into a condition for staying non-authoritative and non-assertive in one’s field. In doing so, I examine the situation was valuable not only as it protected me from being judgmental but also as it prevented me from exploiting or abusing my informants in the process of the fieldwork. Considering that my informants are undocumented youths who are relatively insecure and vulnerable, I argue that the self-awareness of “I’m neither a native researcher nor a specialist yet” can bring “positive tension” for a researcher to be awakened to the issue of research ethic and self-reflections.

Author

• Ga-Young Chung, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign