Enacting thick solidarity through convivencia: Examining relationships and accountability in research with youth of color

This project resides at the nexus of ethnographic arrival and departure to explore the possibilities, tensions, and responsibilities researchers have to do right by those they seek to learn from. I examine the interplay between relationships and accountability to argue that researchers need to forge relationships premised on solidarity or what Liu and Shange call “thick solidarity” with young people in ways that embrace what Chicana feminist scholars call convivencia. I bring together two sets of critical ethnographic data – one with Latinx youth in Illinois (2014–2016) and the other with youth of color in Iowa (2021–2023) to push scholars working with young people, particularly those with minoritized identities, to develop or deepen an orientation that thinks about relationships and accountability not just at the start or the end, but throughout the fieldwork experience