Love, Labor, and Reclamation Through Critical Research

• In Event: "Bout That Action": Community-Engaged Research and the Radical Imagination in Education

Abstract

This paper discusses how a Critical Participatory Action Based Research Collaborative provided refuge and a healing space for marginalized students of color at a highly selective Predominantly White Institution (PWI). Originally envisioned as a multi-generational collective to inspire/empower HS co-researchers to examine their social realities through critical action based research to create change through resistance/activism, the collaborative has also served the university based co-researchers as a place/space/respite for healing through love and labor (Darder, 2015).The collaborative became a life-line which allowed university based co-researchers the opportunity to connect back to their communities, build and nurture community on and off campus, and escape and challenge the daily racial, class-based micro/macro aggressions encountered within the university. The collaborative has functioned as a vehicle for university based co-researchers to (re)claim, (re)negotiate, and (re)imagine their own identities, while practicing a pedagogy of love (Darder, 2015) which challenged and (re)affirmined conditions of (in)justice which are socially produced and designed to privilege and oppress (Cammarota & Fine, 2008).

The collaborative is grounded in Participatory Action Research (PAR) and Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) epistemologies (Ayala, 2009; Cahill, 2016;Cammarota & Fine, 2008; Fals-Borda & Mohammad, 1991; McIntyre, 2008; Torre & Fine,2006) which challenge traditional notions of expertise and ownership of authentic knowledge. PAR assumes everyday people carry deep knowledge and analysis about conditions of their lives and should lead in determining meaningful research questions, designs, methods, analyses, and products (Torre & Fine 2006) which ultimately lead to empowerment and sustainability. Negotiating both insider and outsider identities (as both researcher and indigenous community member), university based co-researchers learned to manage these competing identities and ultimately live in the hyphen (Acker, 2001; Fine, 1994) while seeking, and ultimately building, the comfort and familiarity of home absent from the university. By returning to, working with, and building community on and off campus, university based co-researchers reconcile being outsiders as researchers at the University and struggle with the lack of complete recognition as authentic indigenous members by their communities.

The analyzation of testimonials (Delgado Bernal et al, 2012; Huber & Cueva, 2012; Reyes & Curry, Rodriguez, 2012) given by graduating university co-researchers will provide counter-narratives (Cammarota, 2013; Milner & Howard, 2013) to conducting research. The commitment of the university-based co-researchers is a testament to the role PAR/YPAR can play in the reclamation of ALL participants humanity, including facilitators. At a research one university whose research commonly enter communities with the intention of “mining for data” (Patel, 2016), with the intent of not building thick substantial relationships, the collaborative struggles for their work to be legible and are constantly mis-recognized as a community service program and mentorship group. In addition to the mis-recognition the collaborative struggles with campaigns and narratives centered on diversity and inclusion, which centers white supremacy, devaluing their knowledge while exploiting their presence. Students voluntarily contribute their time and effort to the collaborative because there is an authenticity to the project’s that is absent from the university’s current research agenda.

Author

• Alejandro E. Carrión, Northwestern University