Reborujando the research process: Re/centering undocumented politics of dis/closure

Reborujando the research process: Re/centering undocumented politics of dis/closure

Maribel Estrada Calderón, Independent Scholar
Marcela Rodriguez-Campo, PhD, Nevada State College
Alonso R. Reyna Rivarola, Salt Lake Community College

Maribel Estrada Calderón (she/ella) is a high school world history teacher in Las Vegas, Nevada. She and her family immigrated from Chihuahua, Mexico to Las Vegas when she was seven years old. She earned her B.A. and M.A. in History at UNLV. Maribel is a DACA recipient who is devoted to advancing social justice in her local community.

Marcela Rodriguez-Campo (she/ella) is the Director of the Office of Community, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion at Nevada State College. She is a formerly undocumented Colombian immigrant and a first-generation college graduate. She is an interdisciplinary immigration and education community scholar. Her scholarship uses a Latina feminist approach to examine the relationship between Latinx immigrant experiences with family separation and their educational trajectories. Her work seeks to develop supportive school climates for immigrant students, Students of Color, and LGBTQIA2+ students. Previously, she served as the Academic Success Coach in the School of Education Title V- HSI Grant Team. Prior to joining Nevada State, she trained teachers in culturally responsive pedagogies and anti-racist practices as a teacher-educator, coach, and facilitator. She also served as a secondary English teacher and Speech & Debate coach in the Clark County School District in Las Vegas, NV.

Alonso R. Reyna Rivarola (él/he) is Senior Director for Institutional Equity, Inclusion, and Transformation at Salt Lake Community College. Originally from Lima, Peru, Alonso migrated to Utah when he was 11. His experiences growing up undocumented and queer in Utah have shaped his perspectives and inform his passion for supporting and serving historically marginalized communities while holding social institutions accountable. His research concerns PK-20 schooling practices and illegality in the United States. Find Alonso on Twitter @areynarivarola

Abstract

In this article, three immigrant scholars (two with Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and one formerly undocumented) come together to reflect and theorize about and from their experiences engaging in research with and about undocumented immigrants. Through a Chicanx/Latinx feminist framework, the authors share their historias to dissect their lived experiences as researchers and research participants and how these experiences inform their understanding and engagement with research today. The authors discuss several themes, including the politics of dis/closure, the spirit of reciprocity, and methodological gaps in post-research reflection for healing and closure.

Keywords: closure, dis/closure, Latinx undocumented immigrants, methodologies, partnerships

See: creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

 

Reborujando^[1] the research process: Re/centering undocumented politics of dis/closure

We are not Indigenous to the land many of us only recognize as the United States of America. Thus, we must honor the lives, experiences, decisions, and decision-making processes that Indigenous stewards make for themselves, their communities, and the unceded territories in which we reside. As immigrants —whether through forced migration or otherwise—we are not absolved of our own entanglements with colonization here and in our countries of origin (Pulido, 2018). We must reckon with our relationship with the land and its stewards.

The research process is an innately colonial process by which the methodologies researchers employ and how we engage in inquiry replicate the colonial normalcy that is inherent to academia (Smith, 2012). Historically, Communities of Color have maintained a reasonable distrust of research and educational institutions. It is not a stretch to claim that “traditional” researchers and research approaches have committed significant harm against our communities in the name of “science” (for example, eugenics and race science) and “education” (for example, boarding schools, Americanization schools, deculturalization, and tracking). Yet, when scholars attempt to interrupt these traditional research methodologies, the newly envisioned processes also tend to lack reciprocal partnerships. In other words, the relational aspects of even reimagined research methods are often shallow and rarely, if at all, equitable.

In recent years, scholars have expressed anxiety about how research is conducted with and about undocumented immigrants (Reyna Rivarola & López, 2021). Whether intentional or not, scholars tend to reproduce extractive and exploitative dynamics with their participants. While Institutional Review Board (IRB) protocols require a minimizing of risk, these risks often leave undocumented immigrant communities entirely unaccounted for. In the few instances when risks to undocumented immigrant communities are addressed, they are included only as an afterthought. Not surprisingly, researchers benefit the most from these partnerships (Diaz-Strong et al., 2014).

For undocumented immigrant research participants, the disparity in power and risk are more so evident as dis/closure can threaten livelihoods and families. For researchers—whether undocumented immigrants themselves or not—the risks tend to be career-oriented, such as delays in their publication timelines or resistance to their scholarship in the field. So we ask, how can researchers mitigate the risks of research when working with undocumented immigrants? Can researchers wield their power and absorb the risk? Is there such a thing as eliminating risk for undocumented immigrant research participants? Further, what happens when the researcher is also an undocumented immigrant?

To answer these questions, we draw from Queer Chicana feminist scholars Cherrie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa (1981), who challenge and inspire us to rethink our engagement with the research process and theorize in the flesh about how our research and lived experiences—whether positive and/or negative—have “politicized us” in ways that require us to critique and reimagine research (Acosta, 2018, p. 451). As currently and formerly undocumented immigrants, we have entered the research process first as research participants and then as researchers, which informs the critiques we present in this article. Our intention is not to provide a checklist for scholars interested in researching undocumented immigrants. We have found that providing a checklist results in more harm than good, particularly as academics co-opt what were intended to be subversive practices for centering the community. We also do not intend to ignore or minimize the harms we, the authors, have caused and can cause with undocumented immigrant communities and other communities invested in research. Instead, our goal is to embody how to reborujar or scramble the traditional research process through a Chicanx/Latinx feminist framework by reflecting and theorizing upon our experiences.

Politics of Dis/closure

I (Alonso) was a fourth-year undergraduate student, getting ready to begin working on my honors thesis. I had already conceptualized the study and solidified my research questions. I would focus the next year of my academic career on learning from and analyzing the experiences of Latina undocumented immigrants in the service industry. My next step in the research process was to submit a new study application to our IRB. After I had completed the IRB training, however, I was even more intimidated by the process because it seemed so intrusive and frankly unsafe for the participants. As an undocumented immigrant myself, I did not want to disclose too much information to the IRB about the participants, so I decided to reach out for help.

Throughout my undergraduate career, I would always participate in research projects. And in the spirit of reciprocity, I reached out to one of the professors who had interviewed me twice or thrice for a project of his concerning the experiences of undocumented immigrant activists. I was purposeful in my ask; I wanted him to share an example of an IRB proposal with me to learn how to propose a new study with and about undocumented immigrants. In an unexpected turn of events, I was taken aback by his reaction—a condition; he would only share his IRB proposal with me if I could introduce to him more undocumented immigrants in the community to participate in his study. I was shocked and disgusted by his request; how could he expect me to out undocumented immigrants to him for research purposes?

What does it mean to disclose? Dis/closure is the act or process of revealing a secret or new information about ourselves to others. Sometimes we are comfortable relating this information as it could be a truth we do not fear telling (for example, the neighborhood we grew up in or our position on a political issue we are passionate about). Yet, at other times, dis/closure is more complicated. We may hesitate to disclose information about ourselves that could implicate us in the "white supremacist capitalist patriarch[al]" (hooks, 2000) acts the nation-state has deemed socially unacceptable (for example, a pro-choice political stance or same-sex attraction). In other words, we may hesitate to disclose information that the nation-state could weaponize to criminalize us. Sometimes, we may even simultaneously exercise both forms of revelation and disguise. For instance, we may choose to conceal information or partially disclose specific parts of our truth, while preserving others. Regardless of whether we choose to share or keep information or both, the act of dis/closure is political.

In research, at least in the traditional sense of the term, dis/closure is unbalanced. Generally, the researcher discloses to the participant the scope of the research project and perhaps the limitations of their work, and in return, researchers expect participants to disclose intimate aspects of themselves. Cynthia B. Dillard (2000), a Black feminist intellectual, calls this lack of reciprocity (and relationality) a form of “detachment” (p. 663). Detachment is one of the ways in which researchers trained by a white, Western canon continue to uphold unbalanced power dynamics and relationships. We consider imbalanced dis/closure as one form of detachment. Chicana/ Latina feminist scholars build on the foundational and ground-breaking work of Black feminists (see Audre Lorde, Alice Walker, bell hooks) to theorize research methodologies that challenge researchers to be present in the research process and even match participants in revealing information. For example, Dolores Delgado Bernal, Rebeca Burciaga, and Judith Flores Carmona (2012) remind us that in testimonios, a methodology and method, researchers can and are encouraged to build reciprocity with participants by sharing their experiences and even co-creating narratives of shared experiences between them. Still, we must pause here to ask: Do all revelation acts carry the same weight? Put otherwise, are the consequences of mutual revelations equal? The simple answer is no. For some undocumented immigrant researchers and participants, dis/closure can mean coming dis (read: this) close to deportation.

Reflections on dis/closure in the research process

As currently and formerly undocumented immigrants, we have had to learn to negotiate when to disclose and conceal information about our immigration statuses, our families, and our overall lives for survival (Patler, 2018). As is evident from the excerpt above, the same principle applies to research activities. As participants and researchers, we have had to learn to negotiate the art of dis/closure tactfully. When a faculty member asked Alonso to share the names of undocumented immigrants as a prerequisite to offer his support in the IRB process, it revealed his affective connection (or lack thereof) to the experience of illegality. For many undocumented immigrants, the condition of being undocumented (Reyes, 2017) or illegalized (Sati, 2017) is a secret that we feel impossible to reveal as the consequences can be—and in many instances are—life-threatening.

Dis/closure comes at a high cost for undocumented immigrant researchers and participants. In the eyes of the faculty member, the act of requesting this information from Alonso was just a simple task. In reality, the question carried the weight of an entire community. How can a person presumably invested in this community be so desensitized to the point of asking this question? Furthermore, we, current and formerly undocumented immigrants, cannot ignore how our participation in research can lead to more harm in undocumented immigrant communities, including enabling access to our communities as was asked of Alonso. It is thus imperative that we reflect on the research process—from the methodologies to the analytical frameworks we chose and beyond—to understand how we might be complicit in causing harm to undocumented immigrants (Reyna Rivarola & López, 2021).

Reflections on dis/closure in writing

Another important consideration is the dis/closure we chose to entertain and include in our writing. In a Tweet, Kakali Bhattacharya (2021) invites us to consider the following: "Qual[itative] research tip: Not everything you learn from participants need[s] to be shared in the final data representation. Some things are too sacred to be published. Participants ≠ data repositories & researchers ≠ data extractors." Similarly, when working with undocumented immigrant research participants, we must consider the things that are "too sacred to be published." What information did undocumented immigrant research participants choose to disclose to us, and what is sacred about this information? What is the risk of dis/closure? What information should we feel privileged to have accessed in the data collection process, and which data should not be divulged to the entire world?

Throughout our work there have been moments undocumented immigrant participants have shared with us between whispers, tears, and laughter. These sacred moments must remain sacred. To disclose them would be to not only breach that trust, but to also disrespect the community members we have worked with (Tuck & Yang, 2014). In an increasingly global world, where most people with internet access can find their way to an online article, even if it is through obscure Google searches, it becomes imperative for researchers to know the potential risks of dis/closure. Also, it becomes dangerous to assume that participants are comfortable with researchers putting in writing everything they shared while "on the record." This requires that the research process take a reciprocal and relational approach. Researchers must establish relationships with research participants to avoid sharing information that could put participants or their families at risk, or even further demonize undocumented immigrants in the United States.

Finally, dis/closure can also be the act of reflection in itself. For instance, even in the production of this article, we, the authors, had very open and honest conversations about the truths we felt comfortable and uncomfortable sharing. As scholars and practitioners in education, we had to be careful about what information to exclude and include. We had to ask ourselves: What is the danger to us, as authors, including information that could jeopardize our material livelihoods? For example, we could have disclosed the names of those who caused injury in our research journeys, but would that have been worth it? In particular, as currently and formerly undocumented immigrants, we had to think deeply about the impact of our words on our families, partnerships, and even professional lives.

The Spirit of Reciprocity

At the outset of Marcela’s doctoral studies, she idealistically joined an oral history project that promised to diversify the historical record and capture the experiences of Latinxs in her community. Months after leaving what she came to find was a problematic research project, she received a message from a friend. In what follows, Marcela reflects on this experience:

One morning I received a message from a friend: “have you seen this?” My friend sent me a link to an article that unbeknownst to me had a photograph of me in the center—me, a darker-skinned, curly-headed, formerly undocumented immigrant, Colombianita. They were at it again, co-opting my personhood like a museum artifact to lure community members in and create the illusion that this work was being done by the community. The labor, perhaps, but the design, not by any means. This is the danger that historically marginalized communities face in academia. We run the risk of becoming the sheep from which wolves stitch their clothing. White and outsider researchers with self-interested agendas who claim to be pursuing projects for the benefit of historically marginalized communities can recruit and hire individuals from the same communities in order to gain unfettered access. Proximity enables them to commodify our identities and deploy them as an entry point into voyeuristic conversations that they would have otherwise been barred from. There are ethical questions that we must consider here: Would community members have shared as openly without us present? How would the project look differently without our presence? And what role do we/ will we/ should we/ could we play in allowing this breach in confidence? By mere association, we signal to the community that we have vetted this work, that we are cosigning to the processes by which they will accomplish their goals, and this includes the division, exploitation, and tokenization that they inflict on our community members.

During this project, complex power dynamics were at play that positioned the students as labor, bought and paid for at a “bargain” price. Bargain price is an expression used by one of the managers that still haunts Marcela. It so clearly reveals the attitudes with which they viewed the community and how they designed this work. What the researchers did not know is that on any given day the Latinx immigrant students working on the project were interviewing community members who shared our mothers’ Brown hands, our fathers’ laughter, our accents, our tías’ names. What they did not know was that to ask us to hold the curtain open to the inner workings of our communities, we would be committing a betrayal, naively allowing entry into a sacred space to chismosxs—onlookers who were more invested in our trauma, than our liberation. Marcela left this project feeling jaded and skeptical about what her role could be in research and if it could produce any sort of meaningful change for her community (Villenas, 1996). Upon reflection in being treated as an artifact and interpreter, she was able to envision her dissertation with far more clarity around the politics of risk and power while amplifying her commitment to disrupting these dynamics. If not as a researcher, then as a daughter and as a formerly undocumented immigrant.

Shared Risk & Power

Insider and outsider researchers can both become complicit in problematic power dynamics (Reyna Rivarola & López, 2021). However, when researchers who directly share identities and live in proximity to the realities of the research participants intentionally disrupt these power dynamics, it can result in shared risk and fate. Through this lens, as undocumented immigrant and formerly undocumented immigrant researchers, our shared fates are tied to our liberation (Monzó, 2015). Research then can become what bell hooks (1994) calls, a “location for healing” in which through theorizing about our experiences, we can reclaim our humanity (p. 59).

Undocumented and formerly undocumented immigrant scholars may not only share these experiences, but also the direct risks associated, or have mixed-status families who continue to be implicated by colonial border logics. If recent years have been any indication, even citizenship or a status adjustment are not permanent protections like previously believed, as evidenced through the establishment of the Office of Immigration Litigation, which is dedicated to denaturalization cases (AILA, 2021). In sharing our experiences, we move beyond transactions and engage in an exchange, where our silenced stories signify safety and to disclose them is to relinquish power and safety, an offering to those who would entrust in us their fates through their stories. Our liberation then is tied to one another. For Marcela, this meant disclosing her absence of an immigration status during her adolescence during the research process, her family's migration story, and her family separation experiences, many of which were memories and family stories she had never spoken about outside of her family circle. Stories which she had yet to write down under her own pen because to do so could mean to risk everything. Inviting community members to join in these conversations necessitates a reciprocity in which we are willing to take risks before we ask others to do the same.

On the other hand, outsider and non-undocumented researchers who do not share these experiences are not able to equitably share the risks associated with conducting research with undocumented immigrant participants, while simultaneously having the most to gain from these interactions. Reciprocity in this sense requires deep reflection and intentional negotiation in mitigating risk, offering compensation for the labor performed by participants, and ultimately, releasing ownership of the data, power, scholarship, and benefits that result from the research conducted. In this instance, the researcher serves as what Zeus Leonardo articulates as the critical secretary to the communities they are serving and amplifying through research (Apple et al., 2019). One such mechanism for sharing ownership is through a National Institutes of Health (2021) Certificate of Confidentiality (CoC), which “protect[s] the privacy of research subjects by prohibiting dis/closure of identifiable, sensitive research information to anyone not connected to the research except when the subject consents or in a few other specific situations” (para. 1). The CoC protects data from being subpoenaed by government entities and gives participants autonomy and agency over how data is disclosed.

A spirit of reciprocity requires sharing both risk and power in order to honor and protect the full humanity and lives of undocumented immigrant participants. Lilia Monzó (2015) argues that “an approach that attempts to transform our communities toward our own liberation is one that decolonizes through respect, reciprocity, and placing primacy in relationships” (p. 375). For Marcela, reciprocity meant placing the fate of the research in the hands of participants and inviting them into the work as co-collaborators who could claim for themselves their needs, desires, and intentions within the work. For some, that meant needing a space and place to disclose their silenced stories so they could know that somewhere there was evidence of what had happened to them. For others, that meant exploring memories they had not been able to excavate publicly without the risk of unraveling their families. In recovering their papelitos guardados (testimonios), Marcela as the researcher could produce a record that what happened to them was real (The Latina Feminist Group, 2001). Through this process the testimonialistas transformed from victims to witnesses, as they captured through their life histories the ways in which family separation and immigration shaped their life trajectories (Rodriguez-Campo, 2021).

Historias and Reflections

While pursuing my (Maribel) undergraduate degree at a higher-education institution that markets itself as having one of the most ethnically and racially diverse student bodies in the nation, I enthusiastically embarked on a project that attempted to collect and preserve the histories of Latinxs in my hometown. In preparation for my job as an oral historian, I was trained on how to turn the voice recorder on and off and received a list of questions to ask the narrator. These questions prompted narrators to discuss childhood memories, their immigration experience, and their life in the United States, among others.

Both the narrator and I often found ourselves overwhelmed and sometimes in tears of happiness, sadness, or rage, by the middle of the interview. When the narrator finished answering most, if not all of the questions on that list, I turned off the recorder, thanked them for sharing their historias, walked them out of the room, and then returned to my desk to transfer the audio file from the recorder to the computer. The project did not hold space for us—narrator and listener—to reflect and heal ourselves from the collective trauma we both experienced during the recording of the interview. For the narrators, the trauma was in the recollection of their experiences when prompted. For me, as the listener, the trauma was in witnessing and recognizing myself in their stories and knowing that I had caused harm by asking these questions.

Historias^[2] are powerful tools that help our communities understand where, how, and why we came to be who we are. Gloria Anzaldúa (2015) articulates this as speaking ourselves “into being” (p. 3). With our historias in mind, we are able to better inform and shape our futures, which is why we, the authors, are committed to preserving and sharing our lived experiences with those who are ready to honor and listen to them. The telling and retelling of historias, however, is a deeply intimate practice that can be healing, rewarding, heartbreaking, and/or even traumatic for both the teller and the listener (Diaz-Strong, et al., 2014). As undocumented immigrant or formerly undocumented immigrant scholars who actively participate as historia-tellers and listeners, we have not only witnessed historia-tellers experience these processes themselves, but have also experienced them when acting as either tellers or listeners.

Researchers and research institutions must reborujar or scramble and complicate their methodologies to create a space for historia-tellers and undocumented immigrant scholars to speak, feel, and process the thoughts and emotions, including trauma, that we experience when we choose to tell our historias. Western research methodologies and institutions do not always account for the emotional and psychological harm that their seemingly harmless questions may cause to both formerly and undocumented immigrant research participants and workers. Many of our historias include discussions of traumatic events. To invite participants to divulge these experiences without the proper conditions and preparation can leave the wound open, especially for undocumented immigrant participants as these experiences reflect their current realities.

When we, the authors, interview formerly and undocumented immigrant research participants, we listen and relive historias of, but not limited to, displacement, family separation, deportation, violence, war, discrimination, poverty, the loss of friends and family, exploitation, and longing (Abrego, 2017). These painful stories, according to psychologist and educator Bessel van der Kolk (2014), “overwhelm listeners as well as speakers” (p. 245). In the processes of listening, transcribing, and exploring those historias that shed light on the lived experiences of our communities, we become intimate with the memories that others shared with us. We embody those memories and our bodies become their archives (Trouillot, 1995). Our work as researchers and research participants within/alongside our own communities, then, does not end after we collect data, write a manuscript, publish a report, or step outside academia. We will hold on to and protect these stories for the rest of our lives, if not in our memories then through our bodies. When referencing the embodied archives of current and formerly undocumented immigrants to learn about our cultural memories, identities, political claims, opinions, and knowledges, we demand that scholars and research institutions learn about the transmission of trauma across time and space (Taylor, 2003).

Discussing traumatic experiences, Bessel van der Kolk (2014) argues, generally does not build community. Instead, it fractures it, as many tend to avoid those who cannot let go of their pain and trauma. As immigrants, the opposite is often true for us. To make sense of our immigration and undocu-historias and celebrate our humanity and resilience, we share and pass down our memories, including the traumatic ones, to others. In order to liberate ourselves from social struggles and trauma, writer and activist Aurora Levins Morales (2019) upholds we must retell and teach our historias to our communities. Our stories will function as medicine to heal the wounds of colonization. Collecting and retelling our historias, with or without the presence of researchers, is an act of resistance against global, national, institutional, and other dominant narratives that aim to disempower and silence us by dismissing our concerns, diminishing our pain, overlooking our accomplishments, and ignoring our joy. Through our stories members of our communities learn more about one another, find commonalities in their lived experiences, and then become intimate with one another. We disclose who we are and where we come from to foster new communities and care and support networks. We not only talk about our historias, but, either collectively or individually, make sense of them, too.

Some undocumented immigrant writers and scholars who honor and uplift our needs and humanity with their work include Yosimar Reyes (2020) who writes about Queer undocujoy, Karla Cornejo Villavicencio (2020) who complicates narratives about undocumented immigrant peoples’ lives and mental health, and poet and scholar Alan Pelaez Lopez (2020) who offers an AfroIndigenous critique of colonialism, place, and identity. When we agree to share our historias with researchers, we expect and need them to hold space for us to not only disclose our opinions, thoughts, and knowledge but to also give us the time and space we need to process and understand them. While the responsibilities we described above appear to be manageable and straightforward, not all research institutions put them into practice. We already have the agency to shape and reshape our historias and define how they will be used. We demand that researchers respect those conditions.

Toward undocumented politics of dis/closure

On Friday, July 16, 2021, two months after I, Maribel, walked across a stage to receive my masters degree, I received a news notification that made my heart sink. The news article stated that a U.S. District Judge in Texas had ruled DACA unconstitutional (Jordan, 2021). As a result, many individuals eligible to apply for “deferred action” could not and still cannot submit initial requests for employment authorization. I was reminded that regardless of our achievements within and contributions to Western institutions, and despite our relentless humanity, racialized and illegalized bodies like ours are still deemed deportable. Remember: undocumented immigrant communities are dis (read: this) close to deportation.

To reborujar means to scramble. Our goal in this paper was to embody a Chicanx/Latinx feminist approach to reborujar the traditional research process as a way to push back against the coloniality to which we are constantly subjected. To reborujar is to allow space for the multiplicity of all these colliding realities to exist. To position undocumented immigrants at the center of research is to shift the paradigm to think about everything that is undocumented in research—the silences, the emotions, the unrecognized power dynamics. No longer are we on a quest for objectivity; this is a collective reckoning.

As researchers, practitioners, educators, students, activists, and community members continue to work alongside formerly and presently undocumented immigrant research participants, all partners involved must conscientiously and energetically reborujar all those research methods and ways of knowing que no nos sirven (that do not serve us). We must create projects where we share power, even if that power comes from our silences. Our ultimate goal should be to honor and protect the full humanity of undocumented immigrant communities and individuals. In writing this manuscript in itself, we, the authors, noted that perhaps one takeaway from this discussion on undocumented politics of dis/closure is that intimately discussing, venting, and processing our experiences with research served us as an act of closure in itself. We, the three authors, had an opportunity to discuss our positive and negative experiences with research, all of which, in a way, helped us move from dis/closure to closure.

References

Abrego, L. J. (2017). On silences: Salvadoran refugees then and now. Latino Studies, 15(1), 73–85. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41276-017-0044-4

Anzaldúa, G. (2015). Light in the Dark/Luz en lo Oscuro: Rewriting Identity, Spirituality, Reality (A. Keating, Ed.). Duke University Press Books.

Apple, M. W., Cabrera, N. L., Ladson-Billings, G., Leonardo, Z., & Tuck, E. (2019). Contested Citizenships: Knowledge, Race, and Politics Within an Educational Context. American Educational Research Association, Toronto, ON.

Bhattacharya, K. [@drkakali]. (2021, July 8). Qual research tip: Not everything you learn from participants need to be shared in the final data representation. Some things[Tweet]. Twitter. https://twitter.com/drkakali/status/1413133729162203136

Certificates of Confidentiality (CoC). (2019). National Institutes of Health. https://grants.nih.gov/policy/humansubjects/coc.htm

Cornejo Villavicencio, K. (2020). The undocumented Americans (First edition). One World.

Delgado Bernal, D., Burciaga, R., & Carmona, J. F. (2012). Chicana/Latina Testimonios: Mapping the Methodological, Pedagogical, and Political. Equity & Excellence in Education, 45(3), 363-372. https://doi.org/10.1080/10665684.2012.698149

Diaz-Strong, D., Luna-Duarte, M., Gómez, C., & Meiners, E. R. (2014). Too Close to the Work/ There is Nothing Right Now. In D. Paris & M. T. Winn (Eds.), Humanizing research: Decolonizing qualitative inquiry with youth and communities (pp. 3–19). SAGE Publications.

Dillard, C. B. (2000) The substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen: Examining an endarkened feminist epistemology in educational research and leadership, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 13(6), 661-681. https://doi.org/10.1080/09518390050211565

Featured Issue: Denaturalization Efforts by USCIS (No. 18072705). (2021). American Immigration Lawyers Association. https://www.aila.org/advo-media/issues/all/featured-issue-denaturalization-efforts-by-uscis

hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. Routledge.

hooks, b. (2000). Feminist theory: From margin to center. Pluto Press.

Jordan, M. (2021, July 16). Judge rules DACA is unlawful and suspends applications. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/16/us/court-daca-dreamers.html.

Levins Morales, A. (2019). Medicine stories: Essays for radicals. Duke University Press.

Monzó, L. D. (2015). Ethnography in charting paths toward personal and social liberation: Using my Latina cultural intuition. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 28(4), 373–393.

Moraga, C., & Anzaldúa, G. (Eds.). (1981). This bridge called my back: Writings by radical women of color. SUNY Press.

Patler, C. (2018). To reveal or conceal: How diverse undocumented youth navigate legal status dis/closure. Sociological Perspectives, 61(6), 857-873.

Pelaez Lopez, A. (2020). Intergalactic travels. The Operating System.

Pulido, L. (2018). Geographies of race and ethnicity III: Settler colonialism and nonnative people of color. Progress in Human Geography, 42(2), 309–318. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132516686011

Reyes, Y. (2017). We have never needed documents to thrive. ArtChangeUS: Arts in a Changing America. https://artsinachangingamerica.org/never-needed-documents-thrive-yosimar-reyes/

Reyna Rivarola, A. R., & López, G. R. (2021). Moscas, metiches, and methodologies: Exploring power, subjectivity, and voice when researching the undocumented. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 34(8) 733-745. https://doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2021.1930262

Rodriguez-Campo, M., "Nos/otrxs Que Fuimos Separados: Recovering Testimonios of Separation and Resistance" (2021). UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones. 4190. http://dx.doi.org/10.34917/25374083

Sati, J. (2017, January 24). Noncitizenship and the case for illegalized persons. Berkeley Blog. https://blogs.berkeley.edu/2017/01/24/noncitizenship-and-the-case-for-illegalized-persons/

Smith, L. T. (2012). Decolonizing methodologies (2nd ed.). Zed Books.

Taylor, D. (2003). The archive and the repertoire: Performing cultural memory in the Americas. Duke University Press.

The Latina Feminist Group. (2001). Telling to Live: Latina Feminist Testimonios. Duke University Press Books.

Trouillot, M. (1995). Silencing the past: Power and the production of history. Beacon Press.

Tuck, E., & Yang, W. K. (2014). R-Words: Refusing Research. In D. Paris & M. T. Winn (Eds.), Humanizing research: Decolonizing qualitative inquiry with youth and communities (pp. 223–246). SAGE Publications.

van der Kolk, B. (2014). The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma. Penguin Random House.

Villenas, S. (1996). The Colonizer/Colonized Chicana Ethnographer: Identity, Marginalization, and Co-optation in the Field. Harvard Educational Review, 66(4), 711–732. https://doi.org/10.17763/haer.66.4.3483672630865482

Wilson, A. C. [Wazyyatawin] (1996). Grandmother to granddaughter: Generations of oral history in a Dakota family. American Indian Quarterly, 20(1), 7-13. https://doi.org/10.2307/1184937