Informed by Asian Critical Theory and the literature on borders and borderlands, this paper examines three autoethnographic encounters situated in various contexts--a U.S. Customs and Border Protection inspection at an airport, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the border crossing between home and a child care center. By unpacking sociohistorical…

Traditionally, the academic field of special education has resisted critical perspectives. Despite their advanced skills, epistemological approaches, and ways of knowing, special education scholars enacting qualitative inquiry have often described inadequate support from their academic community. In a parallel manner, Black mothering in historical…

In this chapter, I explore the opportunities that migrant mothers in Finland have for learning the local language, Finnish, in their day-to-day environment. To do this I draw on ethnographic data, collected between 2012 and 2018, comprising interviews, observations, field notes, audio-recorded interaction situations, and photographs taken by the…

Parent narratives have contributed to ethnographic accounts of the lives of children with autism, but there are fewer examples of parents producing their own autoethnographies. This article explores the affordances of an online blog for enabling a parent of a child with autism to produce a written record of practice which may be considered…

This autoethnographic research project examines the transformational learning of a transracial adoptive adult mother and daughter through the lens of postcolonialism. As collaborative researchers, adult adoptee and adoptive mother, examine this lifelong learning experience through critical self-reflection, qualitative meta-analysis, and…

This article draws from a 23-month ethnographic study of mixed-status families living in an emerging Latino/a community to examine 3 undocumented mothers' participation in the act of giving "testimonio," or testimony. In this context, "testimonio" serves as a grassroots tactic for political advocacy and community formation that…

The purpose of this interpretivist qualitative study was to develop a better understanding of the lived experiences and self-authored development of women who were mothers navigating the journey of motherhood, doctoral degree, and a professional life in the field of student affairs. Research was conducted with guiding principles of reciprocity,…

It is imperative to explore multiple approaches to intelligence and public education that fundamentally integrate the ideas and lived experiences of students--with particular interest to those who are most disenfranchised. Within various black communities, the oral traditions transmitted at home are life-affirming "freedom lessons,"…

Carolyn Ellis states, "autoethnography shows struggle, passion, embodied life, and the collaborative creation of sense-making... [it] wants the reader to care, to feel, to empathize, and to do something, to act" (Ellis & Bochner, 2006, p. 433). This autoethnography describes one new mother's struggles to complete her doctoral program of study…

This Chicana Critical Feminist "Testimonio" reveals a Mexican/Mexican-American Ethic of Care particular to the needs and strengths of "Mexicana/o" students and "Testimonios" of struggle, survival informing one Mexican/Mexican-American female educator of predominantly Mexican/Mexican-American students. This work,…

The subject of engaging mothers in appropriate family support continues to be debated and this paper explores the complex factors that influenced one mother's willingness to accept support. In addition, it captures how her family support worker built and sustained a "help-providing" and "help-receiving" relationship despite the…

This manuscript draws from a 4-year feminist ethnographic study of eight young girls and their caretakers in a high-poverty, predominantly White, urban community in the USA. Themes of mothers, mothering, and motherhood were dominant across 4 years of data generation and in this article I focus on the girls' and mothers' narratives to explore…

This cogenerative ethnography explored the lived experiences of two graduate students balancing Ph.D. studies and motherhood through McClusky's (1963) Theory of Margin. Specifically, we asked ourselves: What impact does pregnancy have on personal and academic selves and how are multiple roles and responsibilities managed? Through an analysis of…