In collaboration with my colleagues across the APA, I led the project On the Shoulders of Activist Scholars: Building Healthy Environments for Immigrants, Refugees and Asylum Seekersopens in new window, and I am a former president of Division 24 (Society for Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology). The project was forged at the intersection of 11 collaborating APA divisions, led by Division 24, following a long, strong and often buried legacy of social scientists who have collaborated with community members and social movements, to generate evidence to advance the common good.
The project stands on the shoulders of activist scholars, including W.E.B. DuBois, Jane Addams, Marie Jahoda, Kenneth Clark, Ignacio Martín-Baró, Michelle Fine, Mary Watkins, and Thomas Teo, and shared goals to address injustice toward the most vulnerable members of our society, to which we bear witness in the crisis at our borders and across the United States. Through the use of community-based research and oral history as methods of critical qualitative inquiry into the lived experience of persons who are embedded in a migration history—including immigrants, refugees, asylum seekers, or detainees (Teo, 2020) and their families, this project provides critical views and perspectives of the conditions in communities and detention facilities through an archive of oral histories that reveal the desires, struggles and violence endured by all such persons seeking a new home in the United States at a time of contentious immigration policy debates. We have initiated an archive of activist scholarship that documents work at the intersection of psychology and social justice. The archive is currently housed at the Division 24 websiteopens in new window and includes a featured interview with Michelle Fine conducted by Frederick J. Wertz. (See Oral history of a scholar-activistopens in new window, conducted by Fred Wertz and sponsored by Division 24.) We are thrilled that we will be making these publicly available for historians of psychology.
Documentary evidence of project meetings and dialogues, forums, and pictures from the field expand the project narrative and help to elucidate the meanings, contexts and impacts of the project work. For example, in a variety of sites across the country and sectors, and across the project’s 11 collaborating APA divisions, the CODAPAR project helped to support doctoral students, including Juan Carlos Rivera and Andrea Juarez Mendoza at the Graduate Center, as well as students at a number of other universities. The project includes faculty from universities within and outside of the United States, including the following: Fordham University, City University of New York Graduate Center, Saint Peter's University, Cleveland State University, Wesleyan University, Sacramento State University, Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology at Yeshiva University, Lesley University, University of Witwatersand (Johannesburg, South Africa), Pacifica Graduate Institute, York University (Toronto, Canada), Connecticut College, Boston College and University of Chicago.
In one example of community engagement and outreach conducted under the project auspices that has received public recognition, in December 2019, the Mary Ann Quaranta Social Justice Awards—in the name of social work pioneer Mary Ann Quaranta—were conferred upon Jennifer Ayala, Michelle Fine and St. Peters University and The Center for Undocumented Students. An article on this collaborative work will be published in an upcoming special issue of Qualitative Inquiry: Higher Education in the Time of Trump: Resistance and Critique will include "ENCUENTROS: Decolonizing the Academy and Mobilizing for Justice” by Jen Ayala, Michelle Fine, Anne Galletta, Maria del Cielo Mendez, Andrea Nicktee, Juarez Mendoza, Juan Carlos Garcia Rivera and Sam Fine Surrey.
In the western region, a university-based CODAPAR-funded project has helped develop and circulate research-informed educational materials intended to inform and empower undocumented youth and their families. Specifically, Basia Ellis, assistant professor of child and adolescent development at California State University Sacramento and Div. 24 member, worked with student research assistants to analyze interview data collected with undocumented youth about their life histories and unique perspectives on what it takes to endure status-related limitations (e.g., how to maintain resilience, what skills are needed to stay in college). Ellis and her students drew on important themes from their analyses to develop accessible psycho-educational materials that share the wisdom gained from the interviews with undocumented youth and their families in an effort to help them maintain well-being and navigate the challenges of living with undocumented status.
This August, the Society for Qualitative Inquiry in Psychology, a section of Division 5 (Quantitative and Qualitative Methods), will sponsor a program, led by Peiwei Li and Rakhsahnda Saleem, Lesley University, featuring project work titled, “Global and Transnational Perspectives of the 21st Century Migration Crisis and Counter-Movements of Solidarity and Resistance: Co-Constituting the Stories of Persons Embedded in Sacred Lived Migration Spaces.”
In 1984, Carolyn Payton published a significant article in the American Psychologist, entitled “Who Must Do the Hard Things?” With this project, we answer this call. We seek to honor and join the legacy of social scientists who have long collaborated with everyday people gathering data on how they have been discriminated against, imprisoned, and aggressively policed, with the goals of informing policy, organizing communities, circulating counter-narratives, educating those of us who enjoy the stability of “citizenship,” and rebuilding active, diverse and democratic communities across borders. Our work continues in many forms and across diverse disciplines and communities, and lays an important foundation for the call to activists in the current COVID-19 crisis that has further exposed the inequities in our society, placing immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers at heightened risk during the pandemic. Please see the Division 24 websiteopens in new window for more information on the project.
Find more information on how to apply and past recipients at Interdivisional Grant Program.