(Re)Constructing Expertise on Resistance: What We Can Learn from Youth Mobilizing against Social Inequality

Abstract

Historically, critical dialogue has excluded low-income communities of color and youth voices, and today academic spaces remain geographically, structurally, and intellectually inaccessible to non-academic members of our communities. Omitting the voices of young people in academic spaces reifies the assumption that expertise on resistance is legitimate only when it is taken up by credentialed actors working within educational institutions. In this article, we reflect on two feminist decolonial methods that we believe are necessary for conducting youth-centered research: (1) locating youth, or critically contextualizing demonstrations of youth agency within particular global, local, and institutional settings and (2) confronting our own insider-outsider positionalities in the research process. Theresa Hice Fromille, Roxanna Villalobos, and Valeria Mena critically analyze the community-engaged and participatory action research they have conducted in solidarity with Black and Latinx youth. Karina Ruiz and Lesly Martinez Ibañez discuss three undergraduate research programs offered in three different Hispanic Serving Institutions. Collectively, we aim to de/re-construct what it means to be a knowledge-producer in sociological research, and we advocate for scholars to recognize the political and epistemological significance of making space for youth expertise in academic spaces.