Academia, like many other institutions, is experiencing a racial reckoning. As part of this reckoning, members of institutions of higher education are reflecting on how their structures and cultures reproduce racial inequality and how to disrupt the cycle. One aspect of this conversation that has escaped scrutiny has been methodological training, which can be central to the reproduction of inequality via the marginalization of researchers of color. Qualitive methods guidance and instruction has been criticized for leaving scholars of color unprepared to navigate the complex racial dynamics they confront in the field. In this article we build on these conversations by discussing colorblind spots that surfaced in our graduate-level qualitative methods course in Sociology related to one-time field exercises and fieldwork in a continuous site. We conclude with reflections and recommendations for ethnographic training courses.

The U.S.-Mexico border has been of particular interest to the Trump administration in its ongoing efforts to restrict immigration. Though unauthorized immigrants are the purported targets of measures to increase border enforcement, U.S.-born individuals of Mexican descent also bear the consequences of nativist policies. Based on 42 in-depth interviews, I focus on late-generation (third-plus) Mexican Americans to analyze individuals’ experiences with surveillance by U.S. Customs and Border Protection in Nogales and Tucson, Arizona. In this study, I explore the effects of anti-immigrant policies on Mexican Americans by examining how surveillance operates in people’s everyday lives as well as how people respond to the presence of surveillance. I find that the pervasiveness of surveillance elicits a mixture of fear and desensitization from residents, as they simultaneously grow accustomed to surveillance while navigating an ever-changing political terrain. Finally, I explore responses to the authority of immigration officers, which vary from strategies of compliance to strategies of resistance. These varied approaches are complicated by the liminal status of Mexican Americans in the United States as both a racialized group and a community that benefits from some of the privileges of holding U.S. citizenship.