Critical approaches to ethnographic research tend to situate the researcher according to a particular partisan standpoint. The study to be reported, on undocumented Mexican-Americans (Bagley & Castro-Salazar, 2012, 2017), utilized Critical Race Theory (CRT) as its interpretive theoretical frame, to both situate and challenge ahistorical, decontextualized, and one‐dimensional explanations of Mexican‐American experiences. The study, and its associated live performance (Bagley & Castro-Salazar, 2012), was conceived as a tool to talk with and back to the undocumented Mexican-American community; the essential purposes of the research being to capture and portray lived experiences, to engender co-reflection and mutual learning, and to stage a performance of provocation (Bagley & Castro-Salazar, 2017). The study, and its use of a life history and critical arts-based approach to collect and (re)present ethnographic educational, whilst creating opportunities for engagement and dissemination, also posed ethical challenges and dilemmas for the two researchers (Bagley, 2009), one of whom was himself previously undocumented and Mexican-American, the other a White ‘gringo’ from the North East of England!

Bagley, C. (2009). The ethnographer as impresario–joker in the (re)presentation of educational research as performance art: towards a performance ethic. Ethnography and Education, 4 (3): 283-300. Bagley, C. and Castro-Salazar, R. (2012). Critical arts‐based research in education: Performing undocumented historias. British Educational Research Journal, Volume 38(2): 239-260 Bagley, C and Castro-Salazar, R (2017) Critical Arts–Based Research: A Performance of Provocation. Qualitative Inquiry, doi.org/10.1177/1077800417746425.