Solidarity and Disjuncture Across Immigration and Refugee Statuses in a Participatory Action Research Project

• In Event: South Asians in/and America: Engaging Solidarities, Specificities, and Intersections in Educational Research in Troubled Times

Abstract

Objectives
In this paper, I reflect on how my identities—as an immigrant, as an Indian American, as a tenured professor at an elite university—created moments of solidarity with Somali and Latinx community researchers and moments of silence and disjuncture while working on a participatory action research (PAR) project in a rural Midwestern town.
Perspective(s)/modes of inquiry/evidence
Drawing on the tradition of researcher self-inquiry in ethnographic studies (Mohan & Venzant Chambers, 2010; Narayan, 1993) and on the principles of participatory action research (Torre, 2009), I reflect on how my social identities and my commitments as a scholar influenced my collaboration with immigrant and refugee communities with very different histories and experiences of migration than my own. The project took place in a rural town whose population had undergone a rapid demographic change in the past two decades because of growing numbers of Latinx and Somali residents. Like many small towns adjusting to such demographic changes in their communities, this town has been facing challenges in ensuring that all students complete high school and pursue higher education. In Fall 2018, I became involved in a grant-funded project involving four community research groups to examine the experiences of Somali and Latinx students and parents.
Point of view
As a scholar who is deeply committed to working towards an equitable K-12 school system and who strongly believes in PAR’s core tenet--that communities who are most affected by inequities should play a central role in investigating these inequities and generating solutions to end them--I was incredibly excited about the opportunity to be involved in this project (Torre, 2009). My experiences affirmed this central tenet but also raised questions about what role I can and should play in such projects. Collaborating with Somali and Latinx parents and high school students and with White high school staff meant crossing and bridging multiple cultural and language differences. These collaborations led to moments of joy and connection across differences but also to moments of frustration where I found myself resorting to racist and classist explanations. I interrogate how my privileged educational path as the child of college-educated, middle class South Asian immigrant impacted how I understood and navigated these differences.
Scholarly significance
As this year’s AERA meeting theme notes, it is vital that strong connections are forged among various stakeholders that allow us to imagine newer, better ways to solve entrenched educational problems, including that of racial inequity. Working with community researchers on this PAR project certainly allowed me to push back against traditional, colonizing modes of research. I had the chance to collaborate deeply with communities most keenly affected by racial inequities and culturally ir-relevant schooling. However, this attempt to forge different kinds of connections did not automatically dissolve power differences between marginalized communities and universities. It is crucial that university-based researchers and scholars interrogate the impact of their biases and privileges as we work to create new relationships that hopefully lead to more socially just educational institutions.

Author

• Anita Chikkatur, Carleton College Northfield