Collective Care and Methodological Carework: A Framework for Healing-Centered Research with Immigration-Impacted Latinx Communities

Latinx Sociology – and Latinx Social Science broadly – pushes against hegemonic research models by grounding inquiry in Latinx standpoints and incorporating critical methods. Yet it can be challenging for scholars to implement or innovate such methods. Through storytelling, we theorize collective care – defined as efforts to care for ourselves, each other, and community well-being – as a logic to guide research with Latinx communities. Drawing examples from two research projects with immigration-impacted Latinx young adults, we detail how we applied a logic of collective care in our methods and everyday research practices by centering healing, relationality, and reflexivity. We name these efforts methodological carework to capture the intentionality and effort required to develop, adapt, and sustain a logic of collective care. We argue that a logic of collective care invites an unruly research process but ultimately provides the flexibility needed to yield a liberatory research space.