Chapter 10: Finding and Reading Road Signs in Ethnographic Research: Studying the Language and Stories of the Unwelcome Stranger

In our study of the mass immigration of Nicaraguans to Costa Rica over the past two decades, language and cultural barriers were less of an issue than the challenge to develop a perspective framework that revealed and explained the experiences of Nicaraguan youth in Costa Rica. Most research in this area has focused on immigration from developing or poor countries to industrialized countries and consequently has occurred in a Western framework that pays little attention to the epistemological structures of the immigrant’s cultural experiences. While we were fluent in Spanish and well grounded in Latin American culture, our Westernized academic research agendas and cultural perspectives precluded us from investigating the authentic voices and experiences of the Nicaraguan immigrants who have settled in Costa Rica yet have maintained a physical and psychological connection to their communities across the border to the north.