Two Researchers' Journeys Toward Healing and Safety Doing Community-Engaged Scholarship With Immigrant and Refugee Populations

• In Event: Placing Reciprocity: Centering Relationality in Community-Rooted Education

Abstract

Objectives/Purpose: In line with this year’s AERA theme, two equity-minded immigrant and refugee scholars share their collaborative process about how they work with immigrant and refugee populations.

Author 1 immigrated to the United States when he was 7 years old. He was undocumented and grew up in the U.S. with this identity for more than 20 years. Having lived first hand as undocumented, this scholar wanted to support other undocumented students to navigate the educational system.

Author 2 came to the United States as a child refugee at the age of 6. Her family never talked about the Secret War on Laos. When she learned about the Secret War in college, she changed her major to education to teach other refugee children whose history are also not covered in U.S. schools.

Research Question: What is the emotional labor that goes into doing research with our own populations?

Theoretical Framework: Using collaborative autoethnography (Chang, Ngunjiri, and Hernandez, 2013) the authors explored their journey in doing research as members of the community they were researching. According to Ellis and Bocher (2000), “autoethnography vary in their emphasis on the research process (graphy), on culture (ethno), and on self (auto)” (p. 740).

Positionality: The authors have dual roles as researchers and participants in the collaborative autoethnography process. The authors’ lived experience are testimonios [testimonies.] Gonzalez et al. (2003) explain how testimonios can be used as a pedagogical tool which acknowledges the political context and lived experience of people.

Methods/Mode of Inquiry:
This collaborative autoethnography project began when the two authors engaged in conversations about their own identities and their research interests at a conference they both attended. The parallels in their stories became a topic of Author 1’s podcast Educators and Immigration where Author 2 discussed her research with refugee communities ([Author 1], 2022). The podcast conversation became the impetus for this collaborative autoethnography project.


Findings: Three important findings emerged from this collaboration:
Need for Safety - Author 1 shared it was not safe to share his undocumented status. When he finally adjusted his immigration status that provided some safety in sharing his story.
Radical Healing - Author 2 discussed the concept of radical healing: the process of sharing traumatic events is painful and triggers both participants and researcher but it can also be therapeutic.
Learning about ourselves and others – Both researchers learned more about immigrant and refugee communities from each other and about the emotional labor each expended as community-engaged scholars.

Scholarly Significance:
The testimonios of the authors’ process to do research for justice and equity is a model for new scholars about how to work with immigrant and refugee communities. Scholars will learn how researchers’ social identities impacts how they do research, how they work and support communities and how they teach and engage students in their classrooms.

Authors

• Gerardo Mancilla, Edgewood College
  Presenting Author

• Phitsamay Sychitkokhong Uy, University of Massachusetts - Lowell
  Presenting Author