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Abstract

The renowned U.S. sociologist Howard S. Becker, writing in 1969, posed the ethical question: Whose side are we on? In the context of continued structural inequalities in the distribution of power and wealth and individual and institutional oppression, in terms of class, race, gender, disability, and sexual orientation, this question remains as important as ever. The article, in advocating a robustly partisan approach, offers an emancipatory ethical framework continuum and an empirical example, from the authors’ critical arts-based research with undocumented Mexican Americans, to support and inform critical researchers, committed to working with oppressed groups against discrimination and for social justice.

Keywords

arts-based inquiry methods of inquiry ethics IRBs and academic freedoms decolonizing the academy pedagogy qualitative research and education qualitative research methodologies critical race theory ethnicity and race

Opening Gambit

The renowned U.S. sociologist, Howard S. Becker, writing in 1969, posed the ethical question: Whose side are we on? As a way of the article’s opening gambit, we turn to Becker’s (1969) observations on the holding of research values:

To have values or not to have values: the question is always with us. When sociologists undertake to study problems that have relevance to the world we live in, they find themselves caught in a crossfire. Some urge them not to take sides, to be neutral and do research that is technically correct and value free. Others tell them their work is shallow and useless if it does not express a deep commitment to a value position. This dilemma, which seems so pain- ful to so many, actually does not exist, for one of its horns is imaginary. For it to exist, one would have to assume, as some apparently do, that it is indeed possible to do research that is uncontaminated by personal and political sympathies. I propose to argue that it is not possible and, therefore, that the question is not whether we should take sides, since we inevitably will, but rather whose side we are on. (Becker, 1967, p. 239)

As Denzin and Giardina (2019, p. 6) succinctly observe, all “inquiry reflects the standpoint of the inquirer.” In the context of continued structural inequalities in the distribution of power and wealth in Capitalist societies, and concomitant individual and institutional discrimination and oppression experienced in terms of class, race, gender, disability and sexual orientation, the question of whose side we are on, and the standpoint we adopt, remains as pertinent and important as ever. As Bright and Smyth (2016) note:

The spaces. . . that we study. . . can no longer be analytically separated from the insecurities of lives vitally jeopardised by hunger; lack of shelter; flight, family separation and enforced repatriation; racialised hostility and the symbolic violence of alien bureaucracy . . . (Bright & Smyth, 2016, p. 123)

Moreover, the current dominant global policy discourse, “neatly conceals the responsibility for economic crisis, lays the blame on the victim, and sets the scene for a final de facto deletion of any egalitarian aspiration whatsoever from the neoliberal project” (Bright & Smyth, 2016, p. 123). Arguably, there has never been a greater academic need for a politics of resistance that dares to advocate for social justice and equity by making a stand against repression and forms of personal, cultural, social, and economic violence. In essence, an embodied critical research that can form a responsive mode for societal critique, engagement, praxis, and voice. An approach that is openly activist, robustly partisan, and ethically emancipatory. One which questions the legitimacy of the status quo, challenges the conceptual and theoretical bases of knowledge, transcends dominant ideological assumptions and understandings, and questions the inequitable distribution of power. Fundamentally, to ask whose interests do we want our research to work in and for? In essence, a critical research paradigm that strives to open up alternative possibilities for what can be and should be, for disadvantaged, disempowered people and their communities. Such goals are arguably central to all critical scholarship including, critical arts-based research, critical race theory (CRT), critical ethnography, feminist theory, queer theory, postcolonial/decolonial theory, and critical disability theory. Namely, research interested in relations of power, equity, social justice, and relations ’between people and between people, environments, and non-human objects’ (Fitzpatrick & May, 2022: 76). Studies, committed to the empowerment of marginalized voices and perspectives and ultimately social change. Furthermore, as Madison (2005) discerns in relation to critical ethnography, and which arguably may be applied to all critical research:

A concentration on ethics is fundamental . . . because we are involved in entering into the domains of Others and in the interpretative practice of both representing them and the multiple way they construct their experiences and their worlds. And . . . the power and the politics of the enterprise demands ethical responsibility . . . what we say and write about Others has material effects. (Madison, 2005, p. 90)

In essence, ethics need to be imbued in every aspect of the research process from the identification of the research issue and the setting of the research question(s), to the presentation of the findings and everything which unfolds in between (Fitzpatrick & May, 2022). The overriding question to be asked by those thinking of engaging in any form of critical inquiry is whether the undertaking is likely to be considered relevant, important, and beneficial by research participants and their community. The ultimate emancipatory ethical goal is one of meaningful and authentic participant empowerment. It is toward this ultimate goal that the paper now conceptually turns (see Figure 1).

Figure 1.

Emancipatory Ethical Continuum.^a,b

An Emancipatory Ethical Continuum

For those engaged in critical research, it is necessary for researchers to understand and reflect on what constitutes the field of study, and the ways in which we operate within it, including our ontological and epistemological assumptions (Fitzpatrick & May, 2022). In essence, our positionality in relation to the research undertaking. As Madison (2005; 7) states, “Positionality is vital because it forces us to acknowledge our own power, privilege and biases just as we are denouncing the power structures that surround our subjects.” The Emancipatory Ethical Continuum (Figure 1) seeks to address the question of positionality. To do so, it provides a heuristic ethical framework against and within which critical research may be situated. Drawing on the work of Swartz and Nyamnjoh (2018), the continuum is configured around notions of participant power and research ownership. Conceptually, the power dynamics are constituted by three researcher-participant dispositions, exploited, engaged, and emancipated. The central ethical tenet of the model is related to the transition, reallocation, and ownership of knowledge and power from researcher to participants. Namely, in exploited research the researcher owns the research, in engaged research it is perceived as co-owned between the researcher and participants, and in emancipated research, it belongs to the participants. In this final emancipatory ethical configuration, research is no longer “mine,” or even “ours” but “theirs” (Swartz & Nyamnjoh, 2018, p. 1).

Exploited

Exploited research is ethically one were, in terms of the researcher-participant relationship, the researcher controls the generation of knowledge and holds all the power. As Swartz and Nyamnjoh (2018, p. 1) observe, “Research does not always change people’s lives, nor does it frequently bring about freedom. In fact, the opposite is more regularly true: research can be intrusive, extractive and self-serving.” In an exploitative research context, the relationship between the researcher and participant is asymmetrical. The researcher, while still satisfying all the basic ethical requirements of their research association and educational institution, namely, not to harm participants, ensuring participant confidentiality, obtaining informed consent, enabling respondent validation of findings, and so on, is still the prime beneficiary of research outcomes. These benefits may be manifest in, for example, research publications, grant acquisitions, enhanced reputational standing, academic promotion, and increased financial remuneration. In contrast, the return to the participants from whom the knowledge and data have been appropriated is minimal if anything at all. Conquergood (2013, pp. 403–405) reflected on the different ways in which ethnographers relate to their research participants and the rationale underpinning those relationships. In doing so, he identifies and critiques four unethical stances evident in ethnographic fieldwork: the custodian’s rip-off that selfishly commodifies research knowledge and outcomes for personal benefit; the skeptic’s cop-out one of researcher detachment and the Othering of research participants; the enthusiast’s infatuation that overgeneralizes and trivializes practices; and the curator’s exhibitionism which sensationalizes, idealizes, and dehumanizes the Other. As an ethical alternative to exploitative forms of ethnographic research, Conquergood (2013) proposes a dialogical approach as a means of having intimate conversations with other people and cultures. Instead of speaking about them, one speaks to and with them. Echoing Conquergood (2013), Fitzpatrick and May (2022), similarly suggest a more ethical and equitable dialogical partnership approach to critical ethnographic research, requiring ethnographers ’to attend closely to the research context and to re/orient the research as a collaborative endeavor.’ An ethical position, akin to more meaningful and engaged researcher–participant relationships.

Engaged

Engaged ethical research is thus one in which there is a shift in power and ownership of knowledge in the relationship between the researcher and participants. It is one in which an acknowledgment of the power differential between the research and participants may be acknowledged by the researcher. In that regard, the researcher may involve or collaborate with participants for example, in the planning of the research process and agree mechanisms for feeding back research findings. Such engaged research may create a space for participants’ voices to be heard in opposition to dominant discourses and practices. The engaged researcher possibly even adopted a more partisan activist stance, taking on a role as an advocate against inequity, discrimination, and disadvantage (Fine, 1994). Even so, the research is still researcher-controlled, with the ownership of knowledge, and ultimate decision-making authority and power over the research process residing with the researcher; placing themselves academically front and center on behalf of or with the assistance of participants. The adoption of an advocacy role could be considered ethically problematic, especially if it is a White researcher speaking about and for Black and minority ethnic participants (Troyna & Carrington, 1989). On this potential outcome of ethically engaged research, scholars such as Coles (2022), Dumas and Ross (2016), Smith (2012), and Villenas and Foley (2011), ask the question of whether White researchers should be involved in researching Indigenous, Black, and Latino/a communities. Other academics (see for example, Pillow, 2003) hold the antithetical view that a shared ethnic background with research participants does not automatically mean researchers have greater insight or knowledge of participants’ experiences and perspectives nor necessarily result in it being more equitable and just. Picking up on this debate, Fitzpatrick and May (2022, p. 86) contend researchers “need to be less concerned with insider/ outsider designations and more concerned with the quality and reciprocity of our ongoing and dynamic research (inter)relationships.” Ethically, this relates to a form of critical reflexivity, one which requires the researcher “to be critically conscious through personal accounting of how your self-location (across, for example, gender, race, class, sexuality, ethnicity, nationality), position, and interests influence all stages of the research process” (Pillow, 2003. p. 178). For Pillow (2003), who works within a feminist paradigm, this means situating oneself as a non-exploitative researcher working toward participant empowerment and emancipation.

Emancipated

In an ethically emancipated research approach the traditional and more exploitative division of labor between researcher and researched is transformed. Participants are not simply involved as dispensable pawns or integrated players, but, in its most developed relational form, take control of the research. The researcher becomes increasingly disempowered as the empowerment of participants increases. As a consequence, the social and material relations of research production are rebalanced, thus satisfying the ethical right of participants to control both the research process (data collection, data analysis, theory formation, and dissemination) to serve their needs. As well as the subsequent knowledge produced about them (Swartz & Nyamnjoh, 2018).

Fitzpatrick and May (2022) on the theme of ethical principles in research within Indigenous and minoritized contexts, highlight the ethical principles of Kaupapa Māori Research (KMR). In essence, while KMR as a methodology needs to be primarily undertaken by Indigenous people (Māori) and cannot be undertaken by White/non-Māori researchers. Non-Māori can be engaged by invitation but the research remains fundamentally located in a Māori cultural worldview, conceptualized, led, and facilitated by Māori. Notwithstanding this crucially important standpoint, the principles of KMR, presented here in an abridged form, arguably may serve as a broad template or indicative benchmark for those wishing to work toward an emancipatory ethic. In line with the continuum (Figure 1), the key aim of KMR is the devolution of power from researcher(s) (namely, those who are not from the Indigenous or minoritized communities under scrutiny), to research participants. To facilitate this process and to ensure the safeguard, empowerment, and well-being of participants and communities, certain key ethical principles are identified (abridged and composited) as follows: authority-accountability, benefit, and legitimization-representation (Fitzpatrick & May, 2022). Authority-accountability relates to the overall control of the research design and research outcomes and to this end the direct involvement and control of indigenous / minoritized individuals and groups over each stage of the research process, to ensure answerability. The principle of benefit speaks to ensuring all research stakeholders work together to achieve positive outcomes that enhance the well-being of research participants and their communities. Finally, legitimization-representation as an ethical principle, relates to text production, whether written, oral, visual, polyphonic, and/or multimodal. These all need to be co-created and co-produced, vetted, and validated by the research stakeholders. This is primarily to ensure an accurate and fair reflection of the views and experiences presented. In this respect, as Fitzpatrick and May (2022) state,

. . . research should be accurate and detailed, not simplified, conglomerated, or commodified. It should unravel complex (and, sometimes, competing) storylines, create spaces for dialogue, and make sense of the complex and shifting experiences and realities of the research participants and their research contexts . . . to deconstruct and decenter the authoritative, single authorial voice of the researcher. (Fitzpatrick & May, 2022, p. 86)

In the next section of the article, as a way of showing, what Guillemin and Gillam (2004) term “ethics in practice,” we share and reflect on the research process underscoring a critical arts-based research project, the authors’ undertook, titled Undocumented Historias in the Desert of Dreams.¹

Critical Arts-Based Research

In the opening gambit of this article, the continued existence of oppression and discrimination encountered by groups was foregrounded, so in the 21st century, the cultures in which they are situated have become more fluid, permeable, and geographically unbounded (Denzin, 2017; Rosiek, 2017). Social media, computer gaming, and global economic networks (Ball, 2012) are seen to connect people across distinctions of ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and class, creating multiple meanings and differences through cultural hybridity and new embodiments. As a consequence, the ability to authentically represent the perspectives of participants is now questioned more than ever (Eisenhart, 2017), to include a paradigmatic shift or re-envisioning of research, critiquing the ways in which data may be generated, analyzed, and, in particular, portrayed. This social scientific critique has opened up a space for the use of arts in the undertaking and reporting of qualitative social scientific research (Bagley & Castro-Salazar, 2012, 2017; Denzin, 2017; Holm, 2017; Meizakowski, 2017). The arts are recognized as providing access to societal knowledge, experience, and understanding that engage the senses and emotions and are used to inform research practice (data—collection, interpretation, analysis, and presentation) increasingly across the creative arts, health, and social sciences including education.

As these myriad of arts-based approaches in performance (music and dance), literature (fictive storytelling, narrative, and poetry), visual arts (installation, painting, collage, and comics) and audiovisual and digital art forms have developed (see Leavy, 2019, 2020), so researchers committed to their use, are faced with choices concerning their ethical positioning and standpoint.

Moreover, the crucial point we would wish to emphasize is that while the use of the arts, for example, in the presentation of research (see Bagley & Cancienne, 2002), might break from more traditional and standard textual forms of telling, such a departure does not in itself constitute criticality. Morrison (1994) reflects on the relationship between aesthetics and politics in the artistic process in the following way:

I am not interested in indulging myself in some private, closed exercise of my imagination that fulfils only the obligations of my personal dreams. . . It seems to me that the best art is political and you ought to be able to make it unquestionably political and irrevocably beautiful at the same time. (Morrison, 1994, p. 497)

In the same way, it is claimed critical ethnography is “ethnography with a political purpose” (Thomas, 1993, p. 4), so critical arts-based research is arts-based research with an explicit political purpose. The aim of critical arts-based research (paradigmatically in line with an overarching critical theory standpoint outlined previously) is for a methodological alignment with subjugated peoples and voices to uncover unequal power relations and the disproportionate impact these relations have on certain groups marginalized because of their ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, gender, and class. Elsewhere, we have defined critical arts-based research in the following terms:

A means to access, legitimise, empower and promote the borderland voices of the marginalised and dispossessed, to evoke their experiential and sensual knowledge and to co-recover and interrogate a shared memory and history while simultaneously enriching a social critique of the dominant social order. The ultimate goal of critical arts-based research is through audience engagement and capture to raise consciousness and facilitate educational and social change. (Bagley & Castro-Salazar, 2012, p. 242)

In this instance, the focus of the critical arts-based research involved the staging of a live performance (dance, music, and poetry) and exhibit (installations, paintings, and photography) of the lived experiences of undocumented² Mexican Americans,³ who had navigated across physical, racialized, historical, socioeconomic, political, and culturally colonized boundaries to make a life for themselves in the United States. The event, facilitated by ourselves, titled Undocumented Historias in the Desert of Dreams (Bagley & Castro-Salazar, 2012, 2017).

Undocumented Historias in the Desert of Dreams

In staging Undocumented Historias in the Desert of Dreams, we sought through a critical arts-based event, to acknowledge the undocumented Mexican American experience and co-create and co-participate with participants, artists, and audience members to tell and celebrate counter stories of empowered resilience and resistance. Consistent with an overarching critical theoretical paradigmatic standpoint, our approach, in this instance, involved a fusion of CRT (Ladson-Billings, 1998), to position our thinking. A life history or person-centered critical ethnographic approach (Madison, 2005), as the primary means of data elicitation, and a critical arts-based (Bagley & Castro-Salazar, 2012) live performance and exhibit as the artistic means to disseminate our findings. In so doing, we strived to move theoretically and methodologically from a “context of discovery” to a “context of presentation” (Plath, 1990, p. 376).

Theory

We adopted CRT⁴ as our theoretical position, as it provided an interpretive theoretical and emancipatory ethical frame in line with our beliefs and thinking that racism is ’normal,’ not aberrant, in the U.S. society (Ladson-Billings, 1998). For us, CRT enabled a critical examination and positioning of the educational experiences and lives of undocumented Mexican Americans as social constructions of inferior or even criminal “Other,” embedded in the dominant xenophobic culture of the U.S. society (Salas, 2003; Rivera, 2006). CRT assumes that “race” differentiation exists in institutional policies, programs, and practices that interfere with ethnic minority rights and abilities to obtain the same opportunities available to the dominant majority White society (Villalpando, 2004).

So, for example, in 2021, the undocumented population in the United States constituted 10.5 million, or approximately 3% of the total population (Passel & Krogstad, 2023). The largest number of which, 4.1 million, were born in Mexico (Passel & Krogstad, 2023). Undocumented Mexican Americans are positioned as one of the most vulnerable subjugated and poorest groups in U.S. society (Lichter et al., 2005). They are excluded from certain public services, the protection of labor laws (De Genova, 2004), and live in constant fear of being deported and separated from their families (Kittrie, 2006). In particular, undocumented Mexican Americans are subject to gross economic exploitation (Sarther, 2006), their cheap labor functioning as an engine of growth to economic vitality in many sectors of the economy, contributing at least US$154 billion to the U.S. GDP (Hinojosa-Ojeda, 2001). In 2021, around 7.8 million undocumented workers were in the U.S. labor force (Passel & Krogstad, 2023). However, although undocumented workers pay into employment-related benefits, including unemployment insurance, social security, and Medicaid, through the individual taxpayer identification number (ITIN) system, they are unable to access those compensation benefits (National Immigration Law Center [NILC], 2012). In 2014, US$23.6 billion of tax money was paid through the ITIN system (American Immigration Council, 2020). Consequently, despite paying taxes and contributing substantially to the U.S. economy (Gans, 2006, 2007), they still constitute one of the poorest, unhealthy. and educationally disenfranchised sections of American society (Gonzales, 2016; Kim, & Díaz, 2013; Philbin et al., 2018).

Method

In transitioning the critical arts-based research process from theory to method, and striving to keep within an emancipatory ethical frame, the research was informed by CRT in its utilization of storytelling—or “counter-storytelling” through a (counter) life history interview approach (Nebeker, 1998). Counter-life histories of racialized groups—who are not the subjects of official history and are largely excluded, or marginalized in society—provide a legitimizing narrative voice to the victims of unjust structures and institutions. As such, their narratives are intrinsically political and deeply embedded in relations of power and are not only about facts but about cultural and collective memory, shaped by intricate contexts. In this sense, what matters about a particular narrative is the meaning it gives to the collective subjectivities and identities of a particular people at a particular time (Friedman, 1992). In essence, counter-life history narratives feature as an alternative understanding of the official version of history and represent a counter-rhetorical recovery of history. As bell hooks (1994) observes, “oppressed people resist by identifying themselves as subjects, by defining their reality, shaping their new identity, naming their history, telling their story” (p. 43). Notably, the role of a researcher who utilizes a CRT perspective for conducting life history work is different from a researcher engaged in a more “traditional” interviewing process (Delgado-Gaitan, 2001). CRT researchers seek to challenge White privilege, acknowledge the endemic nature of institutional, cultural, and individual racism, reject notions of neutral objective research (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002), and, in sharing this perspective with the “researched,” believe at some point that researcher and participants can “become actors in a common culture” (Delgado-Gaitan, 2001, p. 8) against racist discrimination and oppression.

In practical terms, the process of identifying undocumented participants to interview, given their status, was a difficult and challenging one, and involved cautiously and sensitively talking with individuals within the local Mexican American community familiar to Ricardo, who importantly was also a political activist, already known, trusted and respected in the Mexican American community in Arizona where the study took place. Following explicit (re) assurances around confidentiality, six undocumented Mexican Americans volunteered to participate in the study.

In respect of positionality, for Carl, as a White English researcher, the explicit expression of value commitments against racism and its societal manifestations were of critical importance, in the building of trust with the undocumented participants and artists. Equally, it was acknowledged that while we held similar value standpoints on and against racism, the positionality of Ricardo, as a Mexican American in terms of experience and understanding of racism, was markedly different from Carl’s. Such critical reflexivity was of central importance to both our personal and professional research relationships with participants, artists, and audience and our collaborative relationship with each other as co-researchers, colleagues, and friends!

A minimum of two in-depth life-history interviews, each of 2 hr duration, were conducted with each participant by Ricardo in a location of their choice, the interview process involving delicate matters of legality and vulnerability so the level of trust and rapport between interviewer and participants needed to be very high. In this instance, it was particularly important that the participants were able to ask questions of the interviewer, explore the research purpose and intent, seek clarification, and come to trust and value the interviewer’s motives. Through this process, the interviewer and participants were able to co-participate in the process of seeking understanding, to co-recover, and “reveal the meaning of lived experience” (Yow, 1994, p. 25) as an undocumented Mexican American. The interviews—when requested—were conducted in Spanish and subsequently translated. During the research process transcripts were shared with participants for accuracy and if necessary modification. At the end of the initial pre-performance fieldwork period, the analysis of the data—located in its wider CRT-informed socio-political, historical, and economic context—was also shared and discussed with participants and added to subsequently participant-validated transcripts. The in-depth and ongoing validation process was deemed ethically important not only to ensure accuracy, but also to develop a sense of mutuality, trust, and accountability; recalibrating the power dynamic between research and participant. From a critical arts-based research perspective the counter life-history interviews were perceived not simply as a means of culturally and politically co-recovering lived experience, but as “a vehicle for producing performance texts. . . about self and society” (Denzin, 2001, p. 24). (For a more detailed discussion of the interviews findings, see Castro-Salazar & Bagley, 2010). These “performance texts” derived from the counter life history interviews, to form the key narratives upon which the performance/exhibit was to be based. An example of this, in the artistic form of poetry, is provided in the next section.

Performance/Exhibit

It was understood that the performance of data to a live audience required a high degree of political and cultural sensitivity related to a performance ethic. As Bagley (2009) states,

. . . the relational positioning of the researcher towards content (what is selected to be performed), art form (the maintenance of the integrity of the genre), artists (who is selected and their role), audience (to whom we perform) . . ., and staging of the performance (how it is structured to communicate meaning) are all integral to the enactment of a meaningful performative endeavour and collectively speak to a performance ethic. (Bagley, 2009, p. 285)

In considering the abovementioned questions, it was considered important to ground the performance and exhibit within the local Mexican American community and to work only with Mexican American artists. Consequently, we worked closely with Mexican American colleagues, at the Mexican American Studies and Research Center and the Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Arizona to help identify the appropriate artists. The artists were chosen following detailed discussions, with myself and Ricardo, around the nature of the project, their commitment to the undertaking, and in particular the cause of undocumented Mexican Americans. This political commitment of the artists (some of whom were themselves undocumented and all of whom had close connections with undocumented family members and friends) ensured a strong safeguarding synergy of mutual trust in what the event was aiming to achieve. Namely, utilizing the arts to portray the lived experiences of undocumented Mexican Americans, who had navigated across contested racialized, socioeconomic, political, and culturally colonized boundaries, to make a life for themselves in the United States.

Each artist was paid a nominal fee as were the individuals responsible for stage lighting, sound, and filming of the performance. The fee level was at their behest as they wished to volunteer their time to the event. Anonymized interview transcripts, which participants at follow-up face-to-face meetings as part of the informed consent process, had agreed could be used, were shared with the artists, who came from the fields of dance, music, poetry, photography, and painting. All the artists were given a free hand and empowered to interpret and create a performance arts-based piece to be staged as vignettes in a 2-hr live performance or exhibited in the entrance to the auditorium. A local community theater, “Beowulf Alley,” in downtown Tucson in an area of a large Mexican American settlement, and thus a “safe space,” was deliberately selected and hired as the venue to stage the performance. A range of advocacy organizations were involved in the promotion of the performance and included the Arizona Association of Chícanos for Higher Education, Border Action/Acción Fronteriza, Derechos Humanos, Fundación México, Los Samaritanos, and the Mexican Consulate in Tucson and the University of Arizona Binational Migration Institute.

The audience of 200 was predominantly of Mexican American origin and included undocumented individuals, community activists, representatives of the Mexican Consulate, University students, and academics, and also known only to ourselves as the research participants. Attendees did not have to pay for admission but were expected to contribute a donation to Fundación México (a not-for-profit organization that awards scholarships to undocumented students) according to their means. Fundación México organized a reception at the theater and provided free food and drinks after the performance.

While we have presented, discussed, and published the performances themselves in detail elsewhere (see e.g., Bagley & Castro-Salazar, 2012, 2017; Castro-Salazar & Bagley, 2012), feel it is important to provide at least a flavor of the artistic work produced and so below offer a brief extract from work of the poet, Dulce S. Encinas with whom we worked.

On the evening of the performance Dulce, illuminated on stage by a single spotlight, read the following poem standing on stage facing the audience. The poem was structured in six chapters (of which we only present the first here), each chapter derived from each of the life history narratives of the six undocumented Mexican American participants. The poem was written and presented in a mix of Spanish and English, mirroring the tendency of many undocumented Mexican Americans to communicate in this way—a style of speaking commonly referred to as “Spanglish.” To assist non-Spanish speakers, the poem, while intended for a bilingual audience, has been translated, and the English text placed in square brackets next to the original Spanish:

CADA UNO TIENE SU HISTORIA Y CADA UNO TENEMOS NUESTROSSENTIMIENTOS, PERO HAY UNA COSA EN COMÚN. . .TODOS SOMOS VÍCTIMAS DE UN FACTOR, UN SENTIMIENTO, UNAANSIEDAD, UNA NECESIDAD: ¡LIBERTAD! [Everyone has a story and every one ofus has feelings. But there is a thing we have in common. We are all victims of one thing: afeeling, an anxiety, a need—Liberty]

Chapter 1: Jessenia

Identity? ¿De qué me sirve eso? [What is it good for?]

No soy de aquí, [I am not from here]

I mean, I grew up here but I’m not from here

¿Pero de allá?. . . [But from over there?]

Ni lo conozco, [I don’t even know the place]

Half of the things I say son de allá y la otra mitad de aquí [is from here, and the other half is from here]

I’m confused! I’m focused, pero ¿de qué me sirve? [but what is that good for?]

My mentality ya no es de mexicana [is not that of a Mexican]

My mentality is of a successful Americana!

¿Pero cuál americana? ¡si soy de allá! [But what an American, if I’m from there]

A certified elementary school teacher,

Certified in bilingual education,

Limpiando casas y cuidando niños por $220.00 a la semana [Ha, cleaning houses and babysitting for $220 a week!]

Si es que ya ni persona soy [I am not even a person anymore]

Soy Jessenia, una extraterrestre de no sé dónde. . . [I am Jessenia, an extraterrestrial from whoknows where]

México le dicen, pero [Mexico, they call it. I don’t even remember it]

I grew up in Arizona!

Y aparte de alienígena soy ilegal [Besides an alien, I am illegal]

Y con mi país “lleno de oportunidades” [And my country full of opportunities]

Estoy añorando una vida, pero con mi libertad interrumpida. [I am longing for a life but with my liberty interrupted]

Jessenia, one of the undocumented Mexican American participants, from whose interview transcripts the poem was based, was in the audience and described her feelings in the following terms:

The poem . . . Dulce . . . personally she had me out there, she did me, an awesome job. Every chapter you feel related . . . 1 am not from here I’m not from there . . . 1 was proud of what she did. I talk Spanglish and she caught that and that is how I talk and who I am. I was sitting there next to my mother and holding my boyfriend’s hand and it at first shocked me and I was crying and she was crying, it was so powerful and so strong . . . 1 was so excited . . . it wasmy feelings about being American . . . and a Mexican. I was listening and watching and thinking this is my story, how I experienced it how I lived it.

The critical-arts-based live performance and exhibit may be conceptually perceived as aiming to inform a pedagogical process of conscientization (Freire, 2000). One in which participants, artists, and audience achieved an increased collective level of critical awareness of undocumented Mexican American oppression, resilience, and resistance. A device able to propagate a discernment of multiple meanings and interpretations of lived experience, to evoke and provoke with the capacity to transpose participants artists, and audience “into new, critical political spaces” (Denzin, 2003, p. 19) of cultural awareness and support. Following Madison (2005), we do not “mean to imply that one performance can rain down a revolution, but one performance can be revolutionary in enlightening citizens to the possibilities that grate against injustice” (Madison, 2005, p. 174). (For a detailed discussion of the provocative impact of the performance on participants, artists and audience see Bagley & Castro-Salazar, 2017).

An auction was held following the performance where the artists’ paintings and photographs were sold, along with personally signed books by the prominent Mexican academic and author of Chicano/a Literature, Miguel Méndez. The proceeds, alongside voluntary donations, going to support academic scholarships for undocumented Mexican American students

Closing Move

The primary aim of the article was to move toward the development of an emancipatory ethic in critical research, in our case critical arts-based research. To that end, an emancipatory ethical continuum was provided, suggesting the need for researchers to move from a position of power to disempowerment in the research process and relationships with participants, who should be neither exploited nor engaged but emancipated by their involvement. As a way of illuminating these emancipatory ethics in practice (Guillemin & Gillam, 2004), the research process underpinning a critical arts-based performance and exhibit Undocumented Historias in the Desert of Dreams, was provided as an analytically tentative case example. Thus, as our closing move, we would like to critically reflect on the extent to which the research process underpinning Undocumented Historias in the Desert of Dreams was able to accord, with the emancipatory ethical principles of KMR presented earlier.

In terms of authority-accountability, it was the case that the overall research design and outcomes associated with Undocumented Historias in the Desert of Dreams remained largely in the hands of ourselves as researchers, and so failed to satisfy the ethical principle of ceding control to participants. Nevertheless, there was direct involvement of members of the minoritized community at each stage of the research process. Ricardo was from the local Mexican American community in which the study was located, as were the participants and artists, alongside the organizations involved in supporting and promoting the research. The ethical principle of benefit is by definition difficult to demarcate, determine, and evidence, as the focus and word limitations of the article, prohibit detailed reflections on how from a CRT perspective the research achieved its goals of increased conscientization (Freire, 2000). Certainly, other published work on the project (see Bagley & Castro-Salazar) suggests a positive emotional and material impact on participants, artists, and the audience. For example, the choreographer/dancer from the performance was inspired by her involvement, to form her own dance company, one based around performing the choreographic interpretation and presentation of “borderland voices.” Touring the Southwestern United States.

Furthermore, and aligning directly with the ethical principle of well-being and benefit, the staging of the event raised enough funds to support two scholarships for undocumented Mexican American students to defray college expenses for two semesters. It is also important to add benefit of the research was mutual. For Carl, as a White English researcher, he felt honored to have had the opportunity to work with the undocumented Mexican American Community and as a result his own consciousness and understanding of their experience and resistance to racist oppression was heightened. Equally, it would be misleading to ignore or fail to acknowledge that while the primary aim was to empower participants and artists, rather than ourselves, we both undoubtedly professionally benefited, in terms of research publications, reputational standing, and career development. For Carl, with the privilege of coming from a dominant White ethnic background, this point is far more salient in terms of the ethics of exploitation than it is for Ricardo, himself a Mexican American.

Finally, in terms of legitimization-representation, the critical arts-based text was co-created, co-produced, vetted, and validated by the research participants and artists. As such it provided an example of a medium, able to deconstruct and decenter the authoritative, single authorial voice of the researcher(s), and to portray through dance, poetry, music, photography, art, and installation, the complex and shifting experiences and realities of the lives of undocumented Mexican American participants.

To conclude, and in so far as approaching research from a neutral stance is philosophically and empirically impossible, as researcher(s) we need to reflect critically on the choices we make. Such choices are not easy or straightforward in academia, as we are never fully (or even partly) in control of the dominant socioeconomic, political, and cultural forces determining who supports, finances, reads, judges, publishes, or acts on the value of our work. Nonetheless, whatever the dominant structural pressures and constraints, what we do retain control over, is our professional and personal values and how we answer and subsequently respond to the central ethical questions: What sort of difference do we want to make; and in whose best interests do we want our research to work?

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research,authorship,and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research,authorship,and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Carl Bagley

Author Biographies

Carl Bagley,PhD,is a Professor in the School of Social Sciences Education and Social Work at Queen’s University,Belfast,where he holds a Chair in Educational Sociology. He is the co-founder (with Mary Beth Cancienne) and founding Chair of the AERA Special Interest Group,Arts and Inquiry in the Visual and Performing Arts in Educaion.

Ricardo Castro-Salazar is a Mexican-born immigrant to the U.S.,currently managing faculty affairs and development,at Pima Community College in Arizona,where he previously held positions as professor,dean,and vice president. He is also an associate researcher for the University of Arizona Center for Latin American Studies. He holds graduate degrees from England,Mexico,the Netherlands,and the U.S.,as well as global education awards,including the Ohtli Award—the highest honor bestowed by the Mexican Republic for service to Mexican communities worldwide.

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