Heading into the field - but first, the bureaucracy

 The project I am most avidly pursuing is the one I wrote about last year -- the impact of the pandemic on the immigrant community in New Bedford and their communities of origin (the three towns from which most of the Guatemalan Mayan immigrants come-- Zacualpa, Chinique and San Andrés Sajcabajá), and migration during the pandemic (from the perspective of both the migrants and the family members they left behind). 

During the last several months most of my work in the immigrant community has been focused on helping out with a new program called Deferred Action. This program grants immigrants who are involved in a labor dispute the opportunity to apply for work authorization (only good for two years) and a social security number (good for all eternity) if they meet certain conditions (for one thing, the Department of Labor has to weigh in on the labor dispute. CCT, the organization I work with in New Bedford, was one of the first organizations to take on this new opportunity, and we started out helping workers from two companies where we have supported organizing efforts for several years to apply. I'll write about the deferred action program and our work separately, but here will only note that the process has been very time consuming. Each applicant has to fill out a lot of forms and present a lot of evidence, and we had to guide people through the process. So I was focused on that and not on preparing for my then-upcoming trip.

At the same time the university created a new procedure for approving international travel, which I needed to follow if I were to be able to use university funds. Last year I started on the process too late (I didn't actually know what it was) and so I was denied permission to use university funds and paid for the entire trip out of pocket. This year, there was a new procedure, especially for countries that the State Department categorizes as Tier 3 -- dangerous, travel not recommended. One needs to request an exemption to travel to a Tier 3 country. So I gave myself plenty of time - or so I thought -- and provided the information that was requested. However, there was one stumbling block -- the university wanted permission from community leaders to conduct research. Guatemala was in the middle of an election cycle, and the thought of trying to reach out to the town mayors seemed like a futile endeavor. First of all, I haven't had any contact with them, and I also thought that they would not respond in a timely matter because of the elections. But I did have contact with the indigenous authorities in all three towns - although I hadn't kept contact information for the indigenous authorities in Zacualpa. I tried to find out if there was some specific level of "authority" that the university wanted me to consult, but they were pretty vague. They wanted written consent -- but I explained that the indigenous authorities were not all fully literate and that a formal letter might be hard to obtain (and it would have been unless I wrote the letter myself and asked people to sign off on it). But I convinced the university that copies of WhatsApp messages should be sufficient. They also wanted me to obtain advance consent from immigrants based in New Bedford to interview their families. I explained that I wasn't going to be able to get consent from everyone in time to give the travel registry 21 days advance notice but that i would get as much as possible, So again, I made screenshots of WhatsApp messages, and was able to get one immigrant to sign a letter, and submitted all of that.

The Institutional Review Board also wanted me to update my application, and the consent form that I would use, and I had to get re-certified with the required Human Subjects training, so all of that took a fair amount of time. 

I had to book my travel since I needed to be in Guatemala for the GSN conference, and I needed to submit a travel authorization form to use university funds. But I was hesitant to submit the travel authorization until I'd heard back from the Provost about whether they would grant my exemption. I did attempt to fill out the travel authorization in late June -- but since our fiscal year ends June 30, all the financial reporting forms were closed down for the last two weeks of June, and wouldn't open again until July 1. I didn't get the approval from the Provost's office until June 30 -- although I had submitted my original request on May 10. So it was a nail biter. I was scheduled to leave on July 4. July 1 was Saturday. I figured no one was going to look at my travel authorization or approve it on the weekend so I submitted it on the night of July 2. And of course it was sent back for revisions on July 3. I revised and resubmitted. More revisions requested (there are things that are not clearly outlined on the form and so I hadn't done them because they weren't spelled out as necessary). Finally I submitted the revised version after COB on July 3. I was worried if I didn't get approval of the travel authorization before I left, that i wouldn't be able to use university funds -- again. I was having trouble adding certain attachments to the online form -- and it seems I will have to submit a paper authorization (it turns out that I can submit the authorization late). 

But all of this meant less time for doing the actual preparation for field work -- identifying recent migrants, explaining my project, securing their consent to contact their relatives in Guatemala, and having them prepare their relatives for my contact (people in Guatemala don't answer phone calls or messages from unknown numbers, so I needed people to contact their relatives and explain that someone named Lisa from the U.S. was going to be in Guatemala and was going to contact them). 

I wasn't able to line up as many people to interview as I had hoped -- but in the next installment I'll talk about the interviews that I have been able to complete so far, and more to come (I hope).