Cultural Political Economy in Research With Immigrant Youth

• In Event: Remembering Jean Anyon: Radical Possibilities in Research, Policy, and Practice With and for Vulnerable Populations

Abstract

The purpose of this segment of the symposium is to explore how the concept of cultural political economy influenced the theoretical framework, research design and methods, and the data analysis in a project crafted with/by/for immigrant adolescents learning English. More specifically, it explores Jean Anyon’s influence on the theoretical, analytical, and practical underpinnings of a youth participatory action research (YPAR) project designed to obscure boundaries between the local/global, subject/object, researcher/researched, theorist/theorized, and cultural/economic.

My clearest memory of Jean and what she taught me is that school reform, without reform to the communities in which schools exist, is akin to cleaning the air on one side of a screen door. She also encouraged me to develop my own theory--like the precipitate that creates rock candy--from those whom we studied in her courses. And so, I endeavored to do so: to blur Burawoy et al’s (2000) local and global, Lather’s (1991) subject and object, and the researcher/researched as necessitated by YPAR.

YPAR represents a “radical epistemological challenge to the traditions of social science,” including where it locates knowledge and who is deemed expert (Cammarota & Fine, 2008, p. 215, italics in original). More specifically, YPAR offers young people the opportunity to identify heartfelt and real issues in their lives and devise a plan to remedy these issues. It also offers adult researchers the opportunity to observe and talk to young people as they construct research projects of their own, thereby offering two levels of data—the data collected through adults observations and interviews with the co-researchers and the data the young people collected as they probed the social landscape with their own questions.

Given the YPAR epistemology and design, the data emanated from three sources: (1) my interviews, focus groups, and photovoice projects with the youth co-researchers; (2) the data collected by the co-researchers from participants in their own projects; (3) mentoring the youth researchers through the design and implementation, including data analysis, of an action research project. In addition, we presented at two conferences and wrote a paper about our research project, which subsequently served as the youths’ college application essay.

The results of this study emanate from the youth researchers’ questions, which are results in and of themselves. The co-researchers chose to investigate topics such gender, the undocumented, conflict between/among immigrant groups and immigrants’ schooling experiences.

There are few examples of such a research design and the results have implications for pedagogy, teacher education, and education policy.

Author

• Daniel R. Walsh, The New York City Department of Education