Paper short abstract:

This paper considers collaborative research and testimonio as key methodological and epistemological tools for community organizers and academic researchers analyzing citizenship, violence, and transformation in immigrant women’s lives and political subjectivity in the San Francisco Bay Area, USA.

Paper long abstract:

This paper considers collaborative research and testimonio as key methodological and epistemological tools for community organizers and research on citizenship, violence, and transformation in immigrant women’s lives and politics. Mujeres Unidas y Activas (MUA) is an immigrant women-led grassroots organization in the San Francisco Bay Area (California, USA) with over thirty years of history working with survivors of multiple forms of structural violence including racism, xenophobia, economic and gender-based violence. In early 2020, a research team co-led by community leaders and academics began a multiyear study to document and analyze MUA’s approach to political engagement and transformation. Women come to MUA seeking different forms of assistance and finding peer support and critical analytic tools to understand and address the impact of violence in their lives. Sharing testimonios within the group builds trusting relationships, collective knowledge and belonging. Public testimonios in turn become citizenship acts that connect personal healing with political engagement and policy advocacy. Key organizational values of mutuality and care, including dialogue and testimonio, guided the research team’s practices as well. Testimonio and reflective dialogue helped make team meetings opportunities for healing and support for the MUA staff carrying out the research alongside their political work during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the realities of research partnerships that spanned multiple lines of inequality and privilege were also complex, uncomfortable and laborious, reflecting some of the everyday dynamics of citizenship we sought to study democratically and collaboratively.

Non-presenting coauthors: Juana Flores (Mujeres Unidas y Activas), Alison K. Cohen (University of California, San Francisco), Maria Jimenez (Mujeres Unidas y Activas), and Gabriela L. Ruelas (University of San Francisco, California).