Challenging "Citizen Science": Liminal-Status Students and Community-Engaged Research

• In Event: Creating Digital Counter-Spaces: Exploring Social Media, Science, and Culture in the Data Age

Abstract

The problematic term “citizen science” continues to circulate in scholarly circles and points to challenges with how researchers may conceptualize who takes part in community-engaged inquiry (Thigpen & Funk, 2020). Emerging from experiences with a research team intentionally comprised of students who are undocumented, political asylees, and those belonging to mixed status families, we seek to center how immigration status can inform justice-oriented research processes. By focusing on students experiencing liminal status, we note both the structural barriers they face as well as their agency (Torres & Wicks-Asburn, 2014). Based on a critical reflexive process, we demonstrate how community-engaged research can engage liminal status on epistemological and applied levels to arrive at more inclusive and just possibilities for public science.

Authors

• Esa Syeed, California State University - Long Beach

• Abigail Rosas, California State University-Long Beach

• Farah Hammam, California State University-Long Beach

• Sherry Shen, California State University-Long Beach

• Fatima Zeferino, California State University-Long Beach