Decolonizing ethnography : undocumented immigrants and new directions in social science / Carolina Alonso Bejarano, Lucia López Juárez, Mirian A. Mijangos García, Daniel M. Goldstein.

Includes bibliographical references (pages [161]-177) and index.

Colonial anthropology and its alternatives -- Journeys toward decolonizing -- Reflections on fieldwork in New Jersey -- Undocumented activist theory and a decolonial methodology -- Undocumented theater : writing and resistance

In August 2011, ethnographers Carolina Alonso Bejarano and Daniel M. Goldstein began a research project on undocumented immigration in the United States by volunteering at a center for migrant workers in New Jersey. Two years later, Lucia Lopez Juarez and Mirian A. Mijangos Garcia-two local immigrant workers from Latin America-joined Alonso Bejarano and Goldstein as research assistants and quickly became equal partners for whom ethnographic practice was inseparable from activism. In 'Decolonizing Ethnography' the four coauthors offer a methodological and theoretical reassessment of social science research, showing how it can function as a vehicle for activism and as a tool for marginalized people to theorize their lives. Tacking between personal narratives, ethnographic field notes, an original bilingual play about workers' rights, and examinations of anthropology as a discipline, the coauthors show how the participation of Mijangos Garcia and Lopez Juarez transformed the project's activist and academic dimensions. In so doing, they offer a guide for those wishing to expand the potential of ethnography to serve as a means for social transformation and decolonization