Uncharted Terrains: New Directions in Border Research Methodology, Ethics, and Practice

Chapter Fourteen. Social Research and Reflective Practice in Binational Contexts: Learning from Cross-Cultural Collaboration

265 chapter fourteen Social Research and Reflective Practice in Binational Contexts Learning from Cross-Cultural Collaboration Jack Corbett and Elsa Cruz Martínez Many of the questions raised in the BREM discussions in effect conceive of the research process as a researcher or researchers acting in relation to subjects and populations. We assess vulnerability (of the population). We consider data access and ownership (vis-à-vis the population). We are concerned about ethical issues (in relation to the population). As we are the researchers and they are the researched, the logical frame would seem to be the ways in which the researchers manage the researcherresearched relationship from a perspective the former consider to be ethical , attentive to the canons of scholarship, and productive in terms of sets of goals or principles. Rarely do we turn the research lens on ourselves and review the ways in which the framing of interactions by researchers in their own context influences the research process and outcomes. The point of this chapter is to consider the research context in terms of how the researchers frame the individual and institutional dynamics that shape the significance of what we learn. Attention to these dynamics is particularly important when we construct binational teams to address sensitive issues in a binational context. After all, what leads us to assume the research process and outcomes are not affected by the baggage we bring to the project? 266 • A Fence on Its Side Is a Bridge Two Cases While our charge was to use a case-study approach in order to explore some of the nuances of deeply textured research designs and methodologies , this chapter will depart somewhat from that charge by reflecting on two cases. Each case consisted of a binational research team (different teams for each case), one working a case on the Mexican side of the border , one on the U.S. side. The single connective thread is that the senior author served as a co-principal investigator on both projects. Nevertheless, both projects confronted the reality that from conceptualization through execution to interpretation the process and product depended heavily on the understandings and perceptions actors on both sides of the border brought to the experience. The argument, therefore, is that in the end not only the outcomes of the research in terms of data and findings but also the nature of research dynamics has been contingent on the relationships among the researchers. Project A was a study of the relationship between heavy out-migration from a rather isolated community in the Oaxaca Mixteca and observed patterns of significant mental depression among senior citizens (Corbett, Cruz Martínez, and Santillan Gonzales 2009; Corbett and Cruz Martínez 2010). The project emerged almost entirely by chance. A casual conversation between the senior author and the junior author, then a medical student staffing the clinic as part of a year of service and training, led to the realization that there was a surprisingly high volume of visits by seniors for reasons that seemingly had little to do with physical illness. Their complaints were not so much of aches and pains but of worry, of loneliness, of a sense that somehow their senior years—years they had envisioned as filled with the company and support of loved ones—were years spent in an increasingly barren social environment. Over 75 percent of the population had emigrated, most to Mexico City but some to cities such as Cordoba and Puebla, to the border, or to the United States. Discussion suggested that perhaps traditional expectations of an old age enriched by extended family networks had been dashed by heavy emigration , and that this in turn produced depression among many. There is little research on mental health impacts of migration on those who stay behind, yet the topic has importance not only for the population immediately affected but also for the entire network of rural clinics in Oaxaca staffed by pasantes, more than 600 in total. Medical training in Oaxaca continues to emphasize mother-child health; the mental health of senior citizens is not a high priority. Yet Oaxaca, second only to the Distrito Federal in terms Social Research and Reflective Practice • 267 of the average age of the population, faces a growing burden of an aging population. Here we enter the world of individual and institutional dynamics shaping research. Pasantes staff rural clinics for a year, then return to the city of Oaxaca...