Walking Pláticas: A New Perspective on Qualitative Research Methodologies With Latinx Borderlands Students

• In Event: Adapted Interview Approaches With Students of Color in Urban Schools and Settings

Abstract

This qualitative study explores how the intersection of race, geography, and the immigration discourse impacts the lived educational realities, subjectivities, and identities of Latinx community college students situated in the Tijuana-San Diego region. Exploring how Latinx students at Frontera Community College (FCC), the closest community college to the Tijuana-San Diego international border, make sense of living and studying in the borderlands can provide an understanding of the different transitions and contradictions that students navigate in their pursuit of higher education.

To best appreciate the Tijuana-San Diego borderlands, I draw from Chicana feminists’ Borderlands theory (Anzaldúa, 2002; Elenes, 2011). The concept of Borderlands merges material and metaphorical borders, and focuses on moments and spaces alongside traditional borders where opposites meet, interact, and lead to a unique set of experiences and identities (Anzaldúa, 2002). To document the subjectivities of Latinx students along the borderlands, I conducted ten individual pláticas and five follow-up walking pláticas at focal points in the Tijuana-San Diego borderlands. As a data collection tool, pláticas challenge rigid interview protocols and instead place oral storytelling at the center of the data collection process (Gonzalez, 2001). In other words, methodologically, pláticas allow for more flexibility, reciprocity, and relationship building while also being in tune with different cultural forms of knowledge from the collaborator (Fierros & Delgado Bernal, 2016). The incorporation of walking pláticas in this study stems from the integration of pláticas (Fierros & Delgado Bernal, 2016; Gonzalez, 2001) and walking interviews (Harris, 2016). This innovative method was designed to more adequately investigate the complexity of the physical borderlands on students’ experiences by: 1) asking student collaborators to select a place; 2) allow for the environment to guide the walking plática; and 3) explore the shifting multiplicities that occur due to space and context in the borderlands.

The following text message prompt was sent to student collaborators who participated in the follow-up walking plática: “For this next part, you can pick a place, a location, on or off campus that speaks to your educational experiences and living in the Tijuana-San Diego borderlands.” It is important to highlight that the walking pláticas were scheduled after there had been an initial plática allowing for the collaborator and researcher to build rapport, learn more about the objectives of the study, and establish a relationship. Each walking plática had a duration of approximately three hours. During the walking pláticas, student collaborators identified physical markers that revealed more about their life histories by igniting conversation about their educational experiences and subjectivities. These material markers included murals, local shops, community centers, schools, and parks. Another aspect of the walking pláticas included that student collaborators and researchers were in public environments and spaces that engaged the senses (i.e., hearing, sight, smell, touch, and taste) contributing to a more holistic experience. Walking pláticas encompass a culturally sensitive “ethnographic research tool that contextualize[s] the lives of participants within a specific [borderlands] environment” prompting elaborate data on the lives of students (Harris, 2016, p. 366).

Author

• Tanya J. Gaxiola Serrano, University of California - Los Angeles