Life on the Other Border by Teresa M. Mares

Author:Teresa M. Mares [Mares, Teresa M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Anthropology, Cultural & Social, Emigration & Immigration, Social Classes & Economic Disparity
ISBN: 9780520295735
Google: zjyFDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Published: 2019-04-16T04:32:21+00:00

CHALLENGING CULTURAL BORDERS THROUGH EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING

Since Huertas became a formalized project in 2012, we have been supported by the work of a dozen student interns and many more short-term volunteers. As the academic supervisor for these interns, I have been pressed to negotiate my own long-term commitments and interest in the project with the more transitory and short-term routines of university students with their ever-changing class schedules, study abroad plans, and ability to commit to an unpaid position when their bills often demand that they devote what little free time they have to paid employment. Despite the many competing demands on our interns’ time, I have been consistently impressed by the devotion and commitment that many of these individuals have demonstrated and the genuine love they have developed for the project. Four of our interns have committed to the project for more than a full academic year, sacrificing paid work in some cases, and in some others receiving competitive funding from the university in the form of student research grants and internship fellowships. Through their work, our interns have gained a deep level of understanding of the daily lives of farmworkers in the dairy industry, in particular the barriers they face in food access and nutrition. As I describe in this section, this understanding reflects the transformative potential of experiential learning for undergraduate students.

Emily is a volunteer who has developed a particularly close connection to Huertas participants and an understanding of their lives both before and after migration. Working as an intern, research assistant, and temporary paid staff member over two-and-a-half years, she saw her involvement with Huertas as a natural extension of her interests in social justice and sustainability. In an interview with my research assistant Jessie Mazar after her first full season of volunteering, Emily shared what she had learned through these initial experiences. Learning about the program from a class presentation organized by a previous intern, she explained:

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