Accompaniment as a Research Methodology: Reflections on Teaching New York City's "Migrant Crisis"

• In Event: 20461 - Teaching and Learning Symposium Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Table 9: Engaged Pedagogy

Abstract

Since late 2022, the arrival of more than 150,000 newcomers in what city officials describe as a "migrant crisis" has put New York City's reputation as a sanctuary city to the test.

In the Spring of 2025—mere days after the inauguration of Trump’s presidency—I began to teach a course that centered the new immigrant experience in New York City. In our interdisciplinary, experiential classroom, we turned to archival analysis, walking tours, oral history interviews and rigorous fieldwork to ask: what does it mean to be an undocumented newcomer in 21st century New York?

We visited Ellis Island to understand New York City’s long history of arrival and settlement, as well as the Tenement Museum to research how newcomer migrants have dwelled across time. We examined how policies surrounding schools, homeless shelters, healthcare, workers’ rights, and immigration evolved over the last century and brought us to today. And, crucial to this symposium: students are currently paired with newcomer asylum-seekers from Venezuela, Colombia, Guinea, Mauritania to take part in a semester-long accompaniment project. Our accompaniment project involves accompanying newcomer families to immigration court, the shelter system, their workplaces, and school meetings. More than ethnographic observation, this course explores the importance of accompaniment as a research ethic and solidarity practice.

This symposium presentation will reflect on the lessons and challenges of teaching accompaniment as a research methodology. I hope to share key lessons gathered from the ethical, logistical, and pedagogical considerations of pairing students with undocumented, newcomer members of their communities. This symposium presentation will touch upon questions of engaged pedagogy, abolitionist teaching, reciprocity. In particular, I will discuss the liberatory potential of accompaniment assignments, as well as the possibility of a classroom that challenges and disrupts modes of knowledge production that have historically devalued the lived experiences of marginalized communities.

Author

• Laura Mercedes Assanmal, New York University