The "Intellectual Vato": The Testimonio of a Youth Outreach Worker and Scholar-Activist in Mexican Chicago

• In Event: 42.083 - Roundtable Session 17
  In Roundtable Session: 42.083-5 - Reflexiones From Nepantlerx Researchers: Exposing the Tension-Rich Realities of Working With Latinx Youth

Abstract

Since the beginning of the academic year of 2012-2013, I departed my university in a micro-urban community in Illinois and returned to my Mexican immigrant neighborhood in Chicago. The purpose of the study was to archive the lived experiences of Mexican Boys and Men (MBM) who were expelled from a local Chicago Public High School. Latino Critical Theory is the guiding theoretical framework for the paper. My methodological principle was to create a sense of community with the participants, which is grounded on the values of solidarity, reciprocity, and community transformation (Dolores-Bernal, 1998). In doing so, I reintegrated myself in my community as a doctoral researcher in order to establish rapport with students, participants, institutional gatekeepers, and neighborhood organizations. As I worked directly with the “disconnected students,” which refers to youth who are 16 to 19 years old that are not enrolled in school and unemployed. I also “shadowed youth” based on what Rios (2011) calls “Original Gangster sociology,” where I observed participants in their natural settings, such as at community events and recreational activities in the community.

In order to complicate my positionality as a researcher, I disclosed my privileges and dilemmas of an “insider/outsider” ethnographer (Villenas, 1996). It is critical to mention that I am a Chicago researcher who is from the same background, community, race, gender, and socio-economic status as the participants studied. As I was entering the field, I felt a sense of “street credibility,” where I was fortunate to have access to the field and able to establish trustworthy relationships with local MBM. As a result of my familiarity with the neighborhood, schools, culture, and my personal experiences of growing up in the same community, I was able to tap into students’ experiences in light of the zero tolerance policy inside and outside a Chicago Public High School. Equally important to highlight is that those “outside” researchers that do enter communities of color and quickly depart once questionnaires and surveys are conducted are not authentic ethnographers. This type of helicopter research does not reflect a model ethnographic study (Sanchez-Jankowski, 1995) and are not grounded on “critical indigenous methodologies or pedagogies” (Denzin, Lincoln, & Smith, 2008).

Drawing on my “cultural intuition,” biases, and assumptions of the specific sites and populations studied (Delgado-Bernal, 1998), I interviewed and audio-recorded the testimonies of twenty current and former male students from Tenorio High School (a pseudonym) in “México town” (a pseudonym). The results are significant because the “counterstories” (Yosso, 2006) of “troubled boys” (Lopez, 2003) who “dropped-out” or were pushed-out of CPS due to the Zero Tolerance Discipline Policy are at the center of analysis. Moreover, the findings gathered as a “native/insider” researcher are promising to the fields of urban education, Latina/o youth, and teacher development studies because the stories are instructive for understanding the educational and living conditions students face as they navigate Chicago Public Schools. Overall, the profile, role, and ideology of the researcher indeed matter when conducting an ethnographic research study.

Author

• Miguel Angel Saucedo, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign