Embroidering Borderlands As a Feminist Method: Staging Relationalities with Female Transit Migrants

In this paper I reflect on the intricacies of devising and rethinking research methods with Central American and Mexican migrants and, in general, participants who will be asked about delicate topics. It advocates responsibility when we position ourselves into the context we investigate. The need to be aware of how one narrativizes experience onto the written page and academic talks is key to this.[1] As an observer, one can pay attention to non-discursive aspects of interactions and interpret them. Some of these less legible expressions respond to obstacles they navigate, which are at the same time revealed but not spelled out. A good heuristic to tackle these aspects of research is Gloria Anzaldua’s Borderlands: The New Mestiza. These women, as people who are adapting to a place they might leave again, like Anzaldua narrates in her seminal book, bring to light something common to migrants in other times,“... a new consciousness—a mestiza consciousness—and though it is a source of intense pain, its energy comes from continual creative motion that keeps breaking down the unitary aspect of each new paradigm.” (Anzaldúa 110) Hence, in line with Anzaldua’s sensibility, I propose to focus on the relational aspects of the “ethnographic encounter” instead of their discursivity. I aim to provide resources to assess how our interactions impact those who trust us with their stories and advocate for thoroughness and responsibility while exercising reflection and caution. Creative field work techniques can benefit those researchers who want to go back to difficult spaces and help themselves and others understand them better.

[1] Linda T. Smith addresses the significance of writing to advocate for non-extractive research methods.