Description

Reconciling Research, Rallies, and Citizenship: Reflections on Youth-Led Diversity Workshops and Intercultural Alliances

Quijada explores how youth activism over anti-immigrant policy H.R. 4437, the Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005, has challenged youth studies scholars to reconceptualize meanings of citizenship. Youth activism surrounding citizenship has led some researchers to ask, “What does it mean to do research and to teach in the area of youth studies when young people who are not participants of our studies walk out of their high schools and demand civic participation?” By blending personal testimony with ethnographic data, Quijada discusses contradictory positions he experienced in writing research that examines how an ethnically diverse group of youth facilitate diversity workshops for other youth. This layered account narrates the methodological and pedagogical challenges Quijada confronted as a youth studies scholar who has come to understand citizenship as intercultural alliances persisting between participants. The article calls into question the positionality and accountability of educational researchers and others concerned with citizenship inequalities experienced by youth in marginalized communities.

youth, youth culture, intercultural alliances, citizenship

Citation: Social Justice Vol. 35, No. 1 (2008): 76-90