Youth Participatory Action Research as a Journey Through Nepantla

• In Event: Invited Roundtable. Youth Participatory Action Research: Collaboration Across Generations for Social Justice Education

Abstract

While Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) elevates youth of color voices within research and transformative social changes (Cammarota 2010), power and privilege still manifests in oppressive ways even when knowledge sharing and the role of researcher is shifted to center youth of color. There lies a tension where adult researchers have reproduced and perpetuated harmful exploitative practices in YPAR spaces and towards youth of color. Adult researchers tied to the academy have access to grant funding, publish articles, have access to conference spaces and gain academic clout through doing YPAR projects where much of the knowledge sharing comes from youth. I ask the question of how we can start to trouble the traditional embodiments of power that emerges within YPAR spaces that are often left unchallenged. Gloria E. Anzaldúa’s work have been pivotal within educational practices and pedagogies in reimagining curriculum, social justice praxis, and facing challenges. Through Anzaldúa’s imperative works, I explore new ways to process these tensions of power presented in YPAR. Specifically, through Anzaldúa’s concepts of Nepantla, Coyolxauqui, and the Coatlicue State (1987), I propose that the journey of multigenerational YPAR work disrupts the traditional role of the adult researcher/educator when reflected upon the framing of Anzaldúa’s work. Anzaldúa’s conceptual and theoretical frameworks urges the discomfort and sitting within messiness of relationships and through those challenges, is where the possibilities of transformations lie. Then within the space of Nepantla, the adult researcher and youth can start to examine the complex relationships that have the potential to be reformed and reimagined.

Author

• Jihee Yoon, University of Arizona