Journal of the Learning Sciences

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Latino immigrants in civil society: Addressing the

double-bind of participation for expansive learning
in participatory budgeting

José W. Meléndez

To cite this article: José W. Meléndez (2020): Latino immigrants in civil society: Addressing
the double-bind of participation for expansive learning in participatory budgeting, Journal of the
Learning Sciences, DOI: 10.1080/10508406.2020.1807349

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/10508406.2020.1807349

© 2020 The Author(s). Published with

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JOURNAL OF THE LEARNING SCIENCES
https://doi.org/10.1080/10508406.2020.1807349

Latino immigrants in civil society: Addressing the

double-bind of participation for expansive learning
in participatory budgeting
José W. Meléndez
School of Planning, Public Policy, and Management, University of Oregon

Abstract ARTICLE HISTORY

Background: The author discusses an in-depth study Received 12 September 2019
of the participatory budgeting process in Chicago’s Revised 27 July 2020
49th Ward (PB49), a deliberative democratic process Accepted 03 August 2020
in which all residents and ideas were positioned as
equal, relying on rational arguments to make deci­
sions about municipal funding allocations. The study
documented collective decision-making practices as
they related specifically to predominantly Spanish-
speaking Latino immigrants.
Methods: Utilizing an expanded cultural-historical
activity theory interventionist framework, the study
examined two iterations of the PB49 process. The
author combines two discourse analysis methods to
identify participants’ learning over time and events,
beyond the individual level.
Findings: The study identified moments of systemic
contradictions that either challenged or supported
the inclusion and engagement of Latino participants
in the PB49 process. The findings revealed the double-
bind of diversifying participation in the PB49 process.
Contribution: The study shows that expansive learn­
ing comprises two distinct levels—collective and sys­
tem-level learning—though it can occur collectively
without materializing at the system level. The study
reports on the lasting impact of resolving the double-
bind of the PB49 process through the creation of
a new activity structure/intervention—a Spanish-
Language Committee—designed to support the
agentic participation of Latino participants, which
became evident through Latino participants’ claims-
making abilities.

CONTACT José W. Meléndez jmelende@uoregon.edu School of Planning, Public Policy, and

Management, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403-1209.
Supplemental data for this article can be accessed on the publisher’s website.
© 2020 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-
NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use,
distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered,
transformed, or built upon in any way.
2 MELÉNDEZ

Introduction
This article focuses on a study of participatory budgeting (PB), a process
whereby community residents determine how municipal funds are spent on
improvement initiatives in their neighborhoods. The specific PB process that
served as the centerpiece of this research took place between 2009 and 2011
in Chicago’s 49th Ward, a highly diverse community in the northernmost
part of the city.
The 49th Ward PB process, or PB49, is a form of deliberative democracy
(Young, 2010), which aims to create spaces for deliberation where all stake­
holders are positioned as equal and rely on evidence-based decision making.
This study documented the competing interests of several PB49 actors—
namely the ward alderman and staff, community members, and the
researcher—each holding different objectives and perspectives about the
purpose of the process, who should participate, and how participants should
engage. Centering on two iterations of the PB49 process, the study investi­
gated contradictions within PB49 practices that played out in situ when
a historically underrepresented group—Latin American immigrants1 who
were predominantly Spanish-language speakers—became involved. In this
context, contradictions refer to opposite forces that materialized in the PB49
practices, that is, the situated activities participants engaged in using tools
and language—or artifacts—to perform required actions and roles in the
activity system (Engeström & Sannino, 2011). The moments of contradiction
that were analyzed for this study related to either challenges or opportunities
that Latino participants faced when engaging in PB49. This research exam­
ined (1) a key contradiction that emerged as Latino participants attempted to
engage in the PB49 process, (2) how it evolved, and (3) its potential for
transforming and reproducing issues of equity/inequity and agency in PB49.

History of participatory budgeting

In 1989, Brazil’s Partido de Trabajadores (PT, or Workers’ Party) implemen­
ted the first PB model in the city of Porto Alegre as a way for residents to
participate directly in decision making around the allocation of municipal
funds. Scholars have described this model as revolutionary, given its equity
goals, its cyclical prioritization of community needs (Smith, 2009), and its
innovative redesign of the city’s resource allocation.

1
In this article, Latino refers to predominantly Spanish-speaking immigrant participants from Latin
America. I use the term since it speaks to how participants referred to themselves, each other, and
their larger community. (See “Research Participants” for further explanation on how participants were
identified.) Although Latinx is often used in academic contexts, this term is neither settled nor the
primary term used by non-college-educated individuals in most community settings (García, 2020).
 JOURNAL OF THE LEARNING SCIENCES 3

Over the last 40 years, PB’s evolution has aligned with three distinct
social-political movements. Two of these movements began in the 1980s and
1990s in response to calls for more representational civil society in Brazil
and other Latin American countries casting off dictatorship. The first, the
direct democracy movement, advocated for those impacted by governmental
decisions to have a direct, formal role in municipal decision making—a shift
from being governed to co-governing (Dagnino, 2003). The second move­
ment, the reflexive turn of citizenship, arose when “social agents [were]
confronted by a rapidly changing economic, social, and political environ­
ment in a manner . . . prompt[ing] a constant questioning and renegotiation
of forms of solidarity and identity” (Ellison, 1997, p. 698). This resulted in
expanded citizenship, civic identity, and public participation in civil society,
and participants previously barred from making claims to democratic activ­
ity began to voice their needs as rights.
In the United States, efforts to expand participation in civil society have
comprised the third movement—deliberative democracy. Most inclusive deci­
sion-making processes in the United States strive to enact deliberative demo­
cratic principles. These processes utilize standardized methods of participation
(e.g., consensus, equal voice), whereby community involvement is character­
ized by discourse that prioritizes arguments supported by so called “objective”
quantifiable data; the value of decision making is largely determined by the
evidence provided by participants and the norms around how that evidence is
presented (Young, 2010). However, this evidence-based approach can actually
accentuate power differentials between participants since the already privi­
leged can further “marginalize the already disadvantaged” through the nor­
matizing force they have in defining the common good (Smith, 2009, p. 98).
In the 2000s, PB advocates in the United States “marketed” PB to elected
officials and other formal decision makers as a best practice for government
accountability, transparency, citizen buy-in, and ensuring the equality of all
ideas in public processes (Baiocchi & Lerner, 2007). Researchers have argued
that PB in the Global North functions as “an attractive and politically malle­
able . . . set of procedures for the democratization of demand-making”
(Ganuza & Baiocchi, 2012, p. 1). However, the PB model implemented in
Brazil was designed as a form of direct, not deliberative, democracy.
Although still promoted as equity-driven and couched in social-justice
language, PB has mutated radically from its original goals, practices, and
design to resemble the normative means of participation common in delib­
erative democracy. These changes are most salient in the rational discourse
of the process that “transform[s] the wishes of the grassroots into sensible,
quantifiable, and comparable demands” (Baiocchi & Ganuza, 2015, p. 197).
Yet, most research on PB in the United States has glossed over these
distinctions, offering only positive assessments of participation writ large
without acknowledging those left out or silenced.
4 MELÉNDEZ

By considering these three social-political movements collectively—as

processes through which democratic practices have been designed and
redesigned (Meléndez, 2016; Meléndez & Parker, 2019)—I had a unique
opportunity to identify and theorize on expansive learning in the context
of PB’s evolution as it was implemented for the first time in the United States.
In so doing, I joined others who have centered underserved communities’
transformative agency and concept formation “in the wild” as an indicator of
expansive learning (Booker et al., 2014; Jurow & Shea, 2015) and as a focus of
fourth-generation cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT; Engeström,
2016; Sannino & Engeström, 2018).

Conceptual framework
My research framed the PB49 process as an activity system (see Figure 1), an
“evolving, complex structure of mediated and collective human agency”
(Roth & Lee, 2007, p. 198) attending to “the subject, the object and the
instruments (material tools as well as signs and symbols)” of the process as
an integrated and “unified whole” (Engeström, 1990, p. 79). Initially, this
framing was not obvious since there was no organizational entity at the
center of the activity. Yet, PB49 fits the characterization of “a network,
a heterogeneous coalition, or some other pattern of multi-activity collabora­
tion” (Sannino & Engeström, 2018, p. 46). Although the aldermanic office
was the host of PB49, it served as a municipal representative, joined by
thousands of resident participants and dozens of volunteers who engaged
in PB49 practices (e.g., norms, values, division of labor, and motives).

Figure 1. 49th Ward participatory budgeting activity system.

 JOURNAL OF THE LEARNING SCIENCES 5

The participants in the process had to figure out how to expand the object
of the activity through practices associated with PB49. This required expan­
sive learning because expanding the object of the activity to accommodate
Latino participants also involved transforming the subjects themselves
(Engeström & Sannino, 2016). I focused on the transformative agency
required when Latino participants co-constructed, mediated, and re-
mediated their actions in relation to contradictions arising from within the
participatory environment. To achieve this, a formative intervention was
collaboratively designed, creating a new activity structure—a Spanish-
Language Committee. This also highlighted how a concept evolved to change
PB49 practices through a formative intervention.

Collective and system-level learning as components of expansive

learning
Typically, in deliberative democratic processes, what matters is not whether
one participant learns something new, but whether what is communicated to
individuals enables them to engage civically in the decision-making practices
of a meeting, a committee, or the overall process. This epistemological
perspective may be valid when engaging groups that have similar educational
or professional experiences that shape common forms of participation (e.g.,
those associated with rational discourse) evidenced by similar speaking
registers, skills, and prior knowledge. Yet, when individuals with other
types of experiences are thrust into shared settings with dominant groups,
their ways of participating are inaccessible as resources in environments not
designed for them (Meléndez & Martinez-Cosio, 2019; Meléndez & Parker,
2019). Therefore, when learning how to participate, non-dominant partici­
pants may struggle collectively to fit into the activity system. In this study, the
Latino participants’ challenges created a system-level contradiction that was
historically situated within the practices of PB49 as well as those of delib­
erative democracy. Given the milieu of participants, this study represented
the type of research that Engeström and Sannino (2016) called for to examine
how “conflicts of motives” (p. 406) can be overcome through formative
interventions.
The PB49 process presented a unique opportunity to analyze occurrences
of collective and system-level learning, both of which, I argue, are compo­
nents of expansive learning as it relates to genetic (developmental) processes
of change (Saxe & Esmonde, 2005). Collective leaning occurs when groups of
participants exhibit qualitative changes (ontogenesis) in their agency to
engage in practices associated with the activity (microgenesis), while system-
level learning refers to changes in practices (sociogenesis) as mediated
through new artifacts, activity structures (modes of participating), and
participants.
6 MELÉNDEZ

Expansive learning occurs through changes in practices, allowing for new

possibilities for engagement as it “produce[s] new material objects, practices
and patterns of activity” (Engeström, 2016., p. 9). Expansive learning is non-
linear (Sannino et al., 2016); new activity structures may support or extend
new and old forms of engagement, while at other times resistance or regres­
sion may impede expansion of the object of activity—for example, when
Latino participants joined PB49 but their motives were not considered.
Accounting for new participants’ motives is necessary for participants to
engage in the situated practices of PB49, since doing so will both alter the
practices and support their development of identities specific to those prac­
tices (Holland et al., 2001). Such identities mediate agency, creating
a constitutive cycle of development through actions.
Zavala (2016) maintained that “design is a form of praxis” (p. 240), which
I further specify as true only when design includes individuals working
collectively toward systemic social change for underprivileged groups.
Praxis integrates political action with inquiry to achieve understanding and
justice (Freire, 1972; Lave, 2012). It is transformative agency, “breaking away
from [a] given frame of action, and taking the initiative to transform it”
(Virkkunen, 2006, p. 49, as cited in Engeström & Sannino, 2016). When
designing for agency, a formative intervention for expansive learning must
be in place to address systemic contradictions manifesting when conflicting
motives are present.
Uniquely, this study examined a key contradiction—a double-
bind—that emerged microgenetically when Latinos attempted to engage
in the PB49 activity system. Double-binds occur when individuals face
pressing, equally incompatible, and unacceptable alternatives in an activity
system—for example, when faced with the choice to participate when
participation looks/feels like tokenism.2 In the analysis, I show how the
cycle of expansive learning, through questioning, analyzing, and modeling
or interpreting, led to the identification of the double-bind. This was
followed by hypothesizing how it could be resolved, which became
a model for solving the double-bind, with transformative potential for
addressing issues of equity/inequity and agency.
Designing for praxis, as both process and outcome, involves role re-
mediation (Bang & Vossoughi, 2016), where participants “work toward
transformative relations and forms of accountability” (p. 176). Whether
praxis actually materialized in PB49 through the intervention was an empiri­
cal question that required looking for evidence of change in how Latinos
engaged over iterations, and if this change consolidated new practices. For
this, I examined the claims-making abilities and dispositions of participants

2
Although the double-bind may be identified at the individual level, it is a system-level contradiction that
must be addressed collectively for the activity system to change (Engeström & Sannino, 2011).
 JOURNAL OF THE LEARNING SCIENCES 7

since the literature has suggested that Latino immigrants’ civic engagement
differs from normative practices in the United States, specifically in relation
to the act of expressing their needs as rights in the public sphere (Abrego,
2011; Rocco, 2004). Democratic processes necessitate an understanding of
when and how immigrants, especially those who are undocumented, engage
in claims-making. Claims-making is tied to one’s sense of belonging, the
kinds of spaces and information available to them for engagement, and “their
ability or inability to voice their concerns and demand rights” (Abrego, 2011,
p. 340). Noticing the differences in the claims-making abilities of the Latino
participants in this study was only possible as a result of observing their
engagement over iterations.
I describe evidence of Latino participants’ claims-making as they took on
the role of “historical actors . . . design[ing] . . . their own futures” (Gutiérrez &
Jurow, 2016, p. 568) in a new PB49 activity structure (the formative interven­
tion). This evidence highlighted expansive imaginaries of citizenship—or ways
of politically envisioning the past, present, and future—with implications for
PB49 and the larger community (Meléndez & Martinez-Cosio, 2019).

Context: the PB49 process

Between 1980 and 2017, the Latino immigrant population in Chicago’s
Rogers Park neighborhood—most of which falls within the 49th Ward—
grew from 12% (City of Chicago, 1992, as cited in Betancur, 1996) to a high
of 27.8% in 2000, then declining to 21% in 2017 (Chicago Metropolitan
Agency for Planning, 2019). At the time of this study, 43% of ward
residents were White and 26% Black; nearly 21% spoke Spanish at home;
and 30% were foreign-born (U.S. Census Bureau, 2017). The City cate­
gorizes Rogers Park as a highly diverse neighborhood (Elejalde-Ruiz, 2006)
but not an “ethnic” one.
In the spring of 2009, the 49th Ward alderman decided to implement
PB in his jurisdiction. Although often described as having virtuous
motives (Ganuza et al., 2016), the alderman’s implementation of PB49
typified a “top-down” approach to cultivating the public for political
support. He first appointed a Leadership Committee (LC) to develop
a five-step PB process and timetable that would culminate in a ward-
wide vote on projects totaling one million dollars in infrastructure funds.
(Figure 2 illustrates the PB49 process cycle). The LC, which oversees the
entire PB process, convenes annually and is limited to community volun­
teers who have participated in an entire cycle of PB49.
Figure 3 illustrates the five thematic committees in which most of the
work for each PB49 cycle took place over a 4-month period during data
collection for the study. Committee volunteers determined which ideas
would be developed into projects and voted upon by ward residents. Two
8 MELÉNDEZ

Figure 2. Chicago’s 49th Ward PB process cycle (2011–2014). Reprinted from “studying
learning in neighborhood level democratic activity,” by Meléndez, 2018, in R. A. Hays
(Ed), Neighborhood change and neighborhood action (p. 98), Lexington Books.

subsequent committees were added as a result of the intervention documen­

ted in this study. Previous studies of PB49 have highlighted both the poten­
tial and limitations of the process. As Stewart et al. (2014) noted, “the 49th
Ward’s process does not include a quality of life index or needs-based
assessment prior to residents’ proposing ideas for improvements” (p. 202);
rather, all resident-proposed projects that meet established funding criteria
are treated equally. Additionally, prior research has shown that “largely
white, college-educated, middle-aged, and homeown[ing]” (p. 203) partici­
pants have embraced the process. Diversifying participation in PB49 has
been a constant challenge.

Research design
The data analyzed in this research were part of a larger study (Meléndez,
2016), conducted between Fiscal Years 2012 and 2014 of the PB49 process,
that used an embedded case-study ethnographic approach. Both the larger
study and the analysis presented here utilized an expanded interventionist
framework (Gutiérrez et al., 2016; Penuel et al., 2016). Within such
a framework, “the term ‘participants’ refers to a collective whole that includes
community members, organizational representatives, educators and
researchers,” and in which “divisions of labor are negotiated . . . and . . .
 JOURNAL OF THE LEARNING SCIENCES 9

Figure 3. Chicago’s 49th Ward PB process committee structure (2011–2014). Reprinted

from studying learning in neighborhood level democratic activity, by Meléndez, 2018, in
R. A. Hays (Ed), Neighborhood change and neighborhood action (p. 112), Lexington Books.

designs for learning are co-created” (Meléndez et al., 2018, p. 1313). Through
the methods of direct observation, participation, and co-engagement with
participants, I documented the relationships and tensions at play in the
activity, capturing a great amount of detail for the thick descriptions of
context and motives for interactions (Geertz, 1973; Ponterotto, 2006). This
research aimed to reveal how power materialized at various scales by drawing
heavily on practice-based theory and the researcher’s deep involvement,
which, generally, is crucial for documenting and theorizing the “develop­
ment, stagnation, or regression of the activities under scrutiny” (Sannino
et al., 2009, p. 3).
In line with the research design, I collected tools related to the PB
process, including meeting agendas, flyers, and recruitment materials.
10 MELÉNDEZ

I also video/audio-taped public meetings of three different committees

—the Traffic and Public Safety Committee (TPSC), the Leadership
Committee (LC), and the Spanish-Language Committee (SLC)—in
addition to assemblies conducted in both English and Spanish, and
other participatory spaces (e.g., voting day). Analytically, moving
between data sources, I asked questions regarding the relationships
between components of the activity system (e.g., how participation
was described in flyers versus the norms in practice). This revealed
how Latino participants engaged (or not) in PB49 practices and iden­
tified concrete moments when components were in tension with one
another.
Because language served as a mediator for civic engagement, I also
analyzed data related to non-Latinos’ civic engagement (i.e. English-
language data). The discourse analysis of the transcripts was supplemented
by documented details related to the context, interactions, and participants
present when the Latino participants attempted to engage in a process
designed for English speakers (Gales, 2011). This helped “thicken” my
ethnographic observations of the challenges and opportunities that Latino
participants faced compared with their English-speaking counterparts. The
analysis revealed that, over time, through individuals’ talk-in-interaction,
the double-bind of diversifying participation was articulated to those in
charge of the PB49 process, initiating the microgenesis related to the SLC
intervention.

Research participants
Study participants were selected based on the following criteria: (1) They
were aged 18 years or older; (2) they had engaged in PB49 as a result of
attending any of the assemblies and/or committees associated with the
process; (3) they were predominantly Spanish-speaking; and/or (4) they
referred to themselves as Latino, Hispanic, or immigrant, or identified with
a specific Latin American nationality. Participants’ racial/ethnic identity was
inferred based on data gathered from their discourse and social interactions,
a common practice in research on democratic processes.
Due to the nature of public meetings and the particular community
studied, at the beginning of each meeting where data were collected and
whenever a new participant joined, a brief assent script was read in English
and Spanish.

Qualitative analytical approach

The recordings of the PB49 public meetings were subsequently transcribed,
cataloged, and then imported into NVivo (see Supplemental Materials for
 JOURNAL OF THE LEARNING SCIENCES 11

transcription conventions). The data presented in this analysis relate to 10

meetings that occurred across the two PB49 iterations in two different
committees and in additional participatory spaces (e.g., community assem­
blies). Adopting Wortham and Reyes (2015) discourse analysis method for
learning over time and events, I analyzed the dataset of the larger research
project. I performed four rounds of coding on the transcripts for topics
discussed and topical trajectories related to the research focus (Schieffelin
& Ochs, 1976), and two rounds of coding for discursive indexicals.
I connected parts of talk across various scales, including meetings and
iterations. These connections allowed me to determine the length and tra­
jectory of the focal topics of conversation; make claims about when Latino
participants were engaged or talked about being engaged; and link actions
across scales of practice.
Of particular relevance in the analysis presented here were person
deictics (i.e., who is speaking and who is spoken to and/or about),
given the study’s focus on attempts by Latinos to engage in PB49.
Evaluative discourse about individuals or collective entities (i.e., char­
acterizations of persons or things across events) also offered insight
into how participants saw themselves or others in relation to PB49
practices. The kinds of actions that participants indicated they were
able to engage in (or not), as revealed in the codes, were key because
they signaled claims-making abilities—agentic civic engagement.
Additionally, to identify the central contradiction in this study,
I coded for linguistic cues signaling the double-bind, such as rhetorical
questions, expressions of helplessness, and usage of collective pronouns
(Engeström & Sannino, 2011).
By incorporating Engeström and Sannino (2011) method into the
larger discourse analysis, evidence of the double-bind was nested
within the microgenesis taking place through PB49 practices. The
contradiction was the false choice of participation that Latinos experi­
enced when they showed up to PB49, manifested through the double-
bind. Had the analysis only identified linguistic cues in participants’
talk in isolation, it might have revealed a conflictual contradiction
(personal or critical) since the talk would have focused primarily on
the Latino participants themselves in the committee orientation.
However, by connecting indexicals across speech events, the analysis
revealed that the double-bind was a system-level contradiction mani­
festing across spaces and participants. I conducted this iterative process
systematically to avoid making single interpretations or missing coun­
ter-explanations, refining codes throughout the process (Wortham &
Reyes, 2015). An iterative and systematic approach to coding indexicals
generally increases the reliability of codes and interpretation of
findings.
12 MELÉNDEZ

Researcher’s positionality
During the study, I worked to be seen as a boundary crosser (Wenger, 1998)
and to build political trust (Vakil et al., 2016) among participants and across
identities over time. Among the Latino participants, I accomplished this by
attending events and engaging with them in Spanish, helping with transla­
tion, volunteering for activities that facilitated their involvement (e.g., deli­
vering information through texts, making home visits, canvasing throughout
the neighborhood), and advocating for them in recognition of our shared
identity-based agenda. With the alderman and his staff, I strategized about
different outreach and engagement approaches, and provided information
about research, challenges, and opportunities. Within the LC, I led the
formation of the intervention—a new Spanish-Language Committee—and
volunteered as a mentor to Latino participants. Through this involvement,
I observed the participants’ lived-in social worlds. Arguably, my access to the
PB49 process was facilitated in part by my identifying as a bicultural, bilin­
gual immigrant who was also a resident and homeowner in the 49th Ward as
well as an interdisciplinary doctoral student in urban planning. This latter
identity also mediated my credibility with the alderman’s office, allowing me
to gain access to the PB49 process for research.

Analysis and findings

In the supplemental materials, I list the changes in practices across iterations
in the different participatory spaces. I describe the contradiction of the false
choice of participation—agentic versus tokenistic—that Latino participants
faced when they attended PB49. In the following section, excerpts from the
first PB49 iteration highlight this contradiction as the primary system-level
double-bind that arose when those in charge attempted to achieve two goals
—diversifying who was participating and differentiating how Latino partici­
pants could agentively participate. The double-bind running throughout the
first iteration was articulated during the evaluation meeting, when the
potential intervention was verbalized. Thus, the practice of reflecting on
the evaluation meeting was instrumental.
The second iteration began when the Leadership Committee discussed the
double-bind and its proposed resolution—the Spanish-Language Committee
(i.e., the intervention). The creation of this new activity structure represented
a collective attempt to resolve the double-bind. I include excerpts in which
Latinos exhibited greater agency to participate in PB49 practices, given their
new access to artifacts necessary for engagement. In the second iteration, their
participation was sustained for the entire cycle, meaning they were involved in
the decision-making phase of PB49. Analysis of both iterations suggests that in
order to resolve the double-bind, it was not enough to expand subjects in an
 JOURNAL OF THE LEARNING SCIENCES 13

activity system (Sannino et al., 2016). New artifacts supporting participants’

mediation in the key practices of PB49 also needed to be introduced.
Analysis over the two iterations also revealed that the initial usage of the
word diverse by the alderman became a key concept that changed over time
as participants negotiated and contested it across various settings
(Engeström & Sannino, 2010). I show how this basic idea developed into
a more complex object, eventually materializing into new forms of PB49
practices. The abstraction of diverse in the first iteration was concretized by
the second.

Iteration 1: Identifying the double-bind

At the beginning of each iteration, the alderman’s office hosted community
assemblies where the alderman introduced residents to the history of PB49.
A key component of this practice was the language used to justify PB49 as
a decision-making tool and to instill pride in the audience, encouraging
residents to participate in the process. For example, at the Spanish-
language assembly held during the first PB49 iteration, the alderman3 said
to the audience:
Residents in our community are {proactive}, they are engaged, . . . they demand
to have a voice in the decisions . . . made that affect their lives . . . . [I]t is also
important to me that we not only increase our numbers but that we include
everyone in our very diverse community . . . . That is why we are having this
meeting tonight, in Spanish, for those whom Spanish is their first language.

Here, the alderman describes community residents as “proactive” and

“engaged”; it is “they” who demand the implementation of PB49, given how
their “decisions” in the process “affect their lives” as residents. The alderman’s
use of “residents” instead of “citizens” is intentional since, in PB49, all residents
aged 16 years or older, regardless of documentation and voter registration
status, were eligible to vote. As such, “residents” included the Latino audience.
However, the alderman also acknowledges the need to diversify participation
in the process: “Everyone” indexes all residents, not just the White home­
owners who, as noted earlier, represented the majority of participants. (This
was why the Spanish-language assemblies had been formed.)
Later in the same meeting, Abil,4 a Latina staff member, takes up the
alderman’s language when addressing Latino participants:
Alright then, you have to get in and run a good campaign. So then, who will be
the community representative from here?

3
Due to space limitations, I only provide the English version of transcripts, in this case eliminating the
translation of the alderman’s words into Spanish and, later, the original Spanish from Latino
participants.
4
With the exception of the alderman and me, pseudonyms are used for all participants in this study.
14 MELÉNDEZ

Abil’s words echo the alderman’s “proactive” and “engaged.” How PB49
participants and, by extension, community residents were described created
a particular kind of evaluative indexical, akin to a type of person: agentic.
Additionally, Abil refers to another system-level PB49 practice: residents
serving as community representatives. If Latinos chose to volunteer, they
would fulfill the alderman’s objective of diversifying PB49 participation.
The adjectives used to describe the kind of person who participated, as
well as Abil’s rhetorical question, are the first indicators of the double-bind of
diversifying participation. The alderman had tied language to forms of
participation, suggesting a differentiation that would need to be addressed
if Latinos became representatives. Additionally, both excerpts suggest that
the double-bind was manifesting as a contradiction between various ele­
ments of the activity system, as seen in Figure 4. For example, if the object of
the activity was, as the alderman said, to have a role in decision-making, the
tools/language that Latino participants brought with them needed to be
included in the norms of the participatory framework. Not doing so would
have prevented Latino immigrants from expanding the object of the activity
and, more specifically, “running a campaign,” which was expected of volun­
teers in the committees.
Having highlighted the initial manifestation of the double-bind, I turn to
examples from the committee orientation, where volunteers from the various
assemblies learned about the committee phase of the process. Seven Latino
residents from the Spanish-language assembly volunteered as community
representatives and attended the orientation meeting in the fall of 2011. Staff
tried to anticipate Latino participants’ language-related needs by serving as
interpreters and translating materials beforehand to enable them to, as
I argue, follow, not engage, since engagement implies agency.
All seven Latino residents chose to participate in the TPSC, given a then-
recent Latino community-wide effort to add a traffic light at a busy intersec­
tion near a central neighborhood hub. Figure 5 illustrates the microgenetic
interactions that unfolded as participants attempted to engage collectively in
PB49 practices. In the figure, Abil leans toward three Latino participants
seated at the end of the table as she interprets the instructions given in

Figure 4. Components of the PB49 activity system in tension with one another.
 JOURNAL OF THE LEARNING SCIENCES 15

Figure 5. Interpreting during the traffic public safety committee orientation.

English by the individual directly behind her, while the remaining Latinos
are seated elsewhere.
Divided equally between Spanish and English speakers, the TPSC
orientation included long turns of English, with side interpretation
happening sequentially. Abil followed a typical English-language para­
digm for conducting official municipal business, creating long interpre­
tation turns. Ethnographic notes taken during the orientation indicated
that Spanish-speaking participants found this organization of the social
activity in English before translating it into Spanish difficult, as it created
a less effective participatory space. Although Latino participants’ initial
civic engagement in the TPSC was enthusiastic, participation dropped off
quickly to just one by the second meeting and none thereafter (excluding
myself). Arguably, the analysis confirmed observational notes and
memos documenting how the tools and language accessible to the
Latino participants prevented them from engaging in PB49 practices in
the first iteration. Latino participants were therefore only present in the
input phase of PB49, due largely to outreach efforts, but not in the
committee phase (i.e., the decision-making phase).
The thick descriptions that emerged from the analysis of various speech
events in the first iteration pointed to a system-level double-bind. This
highlighted the need to determine how to support differentiated participa­
tion since the normative deliberative space in the committees appeared to
accentuate power differentials between participants related to language,
education, and class, among other factors. In the following excerpt,
I verbalize the double-bind during the evaluation meeting of the first itera­
tion as other participants discuss the challenges that arose in the TPSC.
I articulate the effect of these challenges, not only on Latinos, but also on
the individuals supporting such efforts. I then propose the idea of developing
a Spanish-Language Committee or thinking strategically beyond outreach.
16 MELÉNDEZ

To be clear, my identification of the intervention was only possible because

of my active role in the TPSC and my ability to document and reflect on what
I had observed:
José: [Had] someone . . . gone to another committee, there wouldn’t
have been the resources to do that . . . . [Y]ou have to be
prepared so that someone doesn’t feel like they’re just sitting
there to be sitting there . . . . But about how the design of the
process enables diversity to participate.
Susan: It’s a good point and I/
Rose: /It is.
Susan: We kept being reminded, the leadership committee and the
alderman’s staff, . . . that should be in Spanish, too . . .
Alderman: The big challenge, of course, is getting more [diverse] involve­
ment So, how do we get around that/
José: I . . . think that there is . . . {a need} to discuss . . . the diversity of
participation . . . . [T]he . . . people who were monolingual
Spanish-speaking all went to our committee . . .
José: That didn’t work out as well as we planned . . . . [I]t highlighted
the challenges of trying to bring in people who do not speak
English . . . to think proactively about how to address that
instead of year after year thinking that it’s just a matter of
outreach . . . [I]s there a need to do a monolingual committee
of Spanish participants [?] . . . .
Alderman: Both pluses and minuses come to mind, but I think, definitely
think, it’s worth . . . discussion over the course of the summer as
we lead into next year.
In the preceding excerpt, the double-bind that had manifested during the
first iteration was verbalized, and the concept of “diverse” moved from an
abstraction toward a future-oriented practice as an intervention was also verba­
lized. In the excerpt, I begin with an imagined situation in which Latinos are
dispersed across committees, referring to both their agency to choose and to
engage meaningfully, with “someone” and “they” signifying the Latinos who
should not be “just sitting there.” I then introduce the intervention of designing
for differentiated participation, which I later contrast with “outreach strategies”
performed every year with little effect. Both Susan and Rose, two members of
the LC, agree with my assessment. Susan poses translation as the solution,
keeping Latino immigrants in the same “following” mode of participation as
was experienced in the orientation meeting. The alderman asks how we might
 JOURNAL OF THE LEARNING SCIENCES 17

get around the identified challenges, revealing linguistically the double-bind at

work. I articulate a solution, referring back to the alderman’s plea at the
Spanish-language assembly to increase the diversity of participants in the
process, linking temporal events that occurred in the committee orientation
and the TPSC as a result of the need to accommodate participants in a dual-
language committee. In his turn, the alderman supports the idea of creating
a new activity structure for expanding participation, referring to unidentified
“pluses and minuses” and suggesting that it is worth discussing further.
Although the alderman did not elaborate on what he meant by “pluses and
minuses,” in the second iteration, other members of the LC revealed their
concerns when they debated how the SLC might impact PB49 practices and
whether it was worthwhile to expand the object of the activity. Since the
debate centered on the tensions between various components of the activity
system, it further evidenced the double-bind at work.

Iteration 2: Creating a new activity structure—the intervention

At the beginning of the second iteration, although everyone favored expand­
ing Latino participation, some in the LC articulated concerns about creating
a committee for Latinos that would be seen as separate but equal or as giving
preferential treatment. For a few individuals, the potential of the SLC to
remediate Latino participants’ relationship to the object of the activity by
altering the rules and division of labor was unsettling. Nevertheless, as the
chair of the LC maintained, this became a goal of “accessibility and inclu­
sion . . . . [We’ve] got to work out some kinks . . . but I think we have to push
a decision.” The task of fleshing out the idea for a Spanish-Language
Committee was delegated to the Outreach Committee, which drafted
a proposal that was debated and voted on by the LC.
The proposal held that Spanish speakers were not afforded the same
opportunities as English-speaking participants in the PB49 process—namely
opportunities to contemplate and deliberate. The proposal recommended re-
mediating Latino participants’ mode of participation—from one relying on
interpretation to one affirming their agentic participation by giving them
space to contemplate and deliberate in Spanish while engaging in PB49
practices. The promise of such a space is generally why proponents of PB
in the United States have promoted it as a deliberative democratic practice.
Although I took the lead in developing the intervention, numerous other
individuals who were actively involved in the TPSC in the first iteration and
who were also part of the LC in the second iteration were critical in its
development.
Whether the SLC actually resolved the double-bind is an open question
that this study attempted to answer by analyzing SLC members’ collective
engagement in practices that were both similar to and different from those
18 MELÉNDEZ

associated with other committees. These practices went beyond simply con­
ducting meeting business in Spanish. For example, in the first iteration,
during the initial round of coding for topic trajectories identified when
Latino participants tried to discuss non-PB49-related topics, they were shut
down given that those topic trajectories were not allowed to be developed. As
such, during the SLC’s first meeting (December 2012), it was explicitly
agreed upon by members that bringing up other community concerns
would be a meeting norm. At that meeting, I informed the committee
members about a park planning meeting that was taking place at the same
time, and we decided collectively to end the meeting early to attend. Notably,
this kind of collective agency—that is, to change the agenda of a meeting—
would have been more difficult for Latino participants to achieve in the other
committees.
Attending the park planning meeting had a profound effect on the SLC
members, who felt disconcerted and personally violated as a result of the
social interactions that took place at that meeting. Participants shared these
feelings at the next SLC meeting (January 2013), narrating their experiences
and re-mediating, in their new space, their role vis-a-vis those at the park
planning meeting:
Cesar: They all got quiet. Like, “Who let them in here?” You feel it . . . . [T]hey
don’t tell you directly but the verbal language leaves a lot to imply. It was . . .
as if someone had arrived and ruined their party. Or that “Now we have to
watch what we say, so we have to be sensible.”
{Carmen}: Without taking us into account . . . .
Cesar: They are not taking us into account . . . . [O]thers present could attest
that when we arrived it was like we had ruined their party.
In the preceding turns, Cesar’s “they” refers to the mostly White home­
owning participants already in attendance at the park planning meeting. He
calls the meeting a “party” and delineates two types of characters: “they” who
hosted or were invited, and “them” who crashed the party. Carmen’s “us,”
who were not taken into account, indexes “them” who crashed the party.
Agreeing, Cesar claims that others in attendance at the planning meeting
could attest to their narrative. The SLC members’ choice to attend the park
planning meeting had broken the norms of how Latino participants were
expected to participate across systems—PB49 and other planning efforts in
the community.

Claims-making abilities: A new sense of agency

The Latino participants’ experience at the park planning meeting might have
shut down their sense of agency had they not used their feelings of exclusion
 JOURNAL OF THE LEARNING SCIENCES 19

Figure 6. Spanish-language committee members canvasing during the second iteration

of PB49 in the study.

as a source of motivation. By the end of the January 2013 meeting, they had
made the same park an SLC priority, with Carmen claiming the park as “our
concern”—the first display of the Latino participants’ claims-making abilities
in the SLC.
I argue that the SLC offered participants a collective reflective space for
exhibiting their agency to deliberate, as evidenced through their engagement
in PB49 practices (the very ideals that the proponents of PB in the United
States implied but did not specify in their initial marketing of PB). The
difference in process was dialectically related to different outcomes.
Members of the SLC discussed these outcomes when rehearsing their two
park-improvement presentations for the project expos (see Figure 6 of SLC
members canvasing the neighborhood). The transformative agency they
exhibited as they evaluated their collective work held potential for future
social change:
Salvador: /Very well/
Carmen: /Very good work/
Moira: /I don’t know why {to say of this group} I am very proud . . . . [It] gives
me great pleasure that after 20 something years there is a group that is
looking out for the people in this {~} and that we also have the right to
seek to improve Rogers Park and . . . the opportunity that this committee in
Spanish is being organized.
Here, Salvador and Carmen positively evaluate the committee’s work. The
SLC members were proud to have done the type of work Abil had asked of
20 MELÉNDEZ

the Latino participants during the assembly in the first iteration. Echoing the
agentic language from that assembly, Moira also expresses her pride in the
group. In this instance, the “group” establishes a relationship between the
positive evaluations and the committee members. Moira continues by voi­
cing that, after “20 something years” (presumably how long she had lived in
the neighborhood), there was finally a “group” that cared for “the people.”
Moira’s description of the SLC’s role and the agency of its members is
strikingly different from that of the parks planning meeting and from the
Latinos participants’ experience at the end of the first iteration. Although not
initially obvious whom “the people” refers to, it likely indexes the predomi­
nantly Spanish-speaking Latino immigrant community, since Moira refers to
the group characterized by the SLC and uses a collective pronoun in claiming
that “we also have rights,” referring perhaps to the right to be taken into
account, “to crash the party.” Moira’s claims-making evidences the increased
agency of Latino participants in directing their own civic engagement. This
form of claims-making relates to expansive imaginaries of citizenship, as
exemplified in the following excerpt:
Cesar: With something, because that is how the storm starts, that is how
change starts with just a little.
Moira: The opportunity that this is being organized, this Spanish Language
Committee, and I see young people like (Cesar) . . . . [We] see that he wants to
put in the effort and to support him in what we can, the group.
Expansive imaginaries of citizenship—evidence of praxis—occur when
participants’ awareness of the structural challenges posed by political pro­
cesses (e.g., PB49) is turned into visions of new, future-oriented civic actions.
In the preceding excerpt, both “something” and “little” index the collabora­
tions and contributions that the committee had been reflecting on as cata­
lysts for social change—ostensibly, the metaphorical “storm.” Moira’s
“opportunity” connects directly to the SLC, to the potential for social change
that Cesar had just referenced, which Moira commits to supporting. This,
I argue, represents a turning point in the expansive learning that took place
in the SLC, evidencing both collective and system-level learning—transfor­
mative agency and the expansion of the object of the activity and of what
PB49 practices could be.

Discussion
The analysis presented in this article illustrates the expansive learning that
took place at both the collective and system levels, a focus of fourth-
generation CHAT research. This study sought to combine different
approaches to discourse analysis that aimed to capture learning across scales
 JOURNAL OF THE LEARNING SCIENCES 21

and beyond the individual level (Engeström & Sannino, 2011; Wortham &
Reyes, 2015). The results suggest that expansive learning became deeply
nested within PB49 practices. This included changing and adding new
PB49 practices that, in some instances, began to be generalized (Engeström
& Sannino, 2010). By nesting expansive learning within micro-interactions,
the study revealed two levels of learning—collective and system-level. The
findings offer new dimensions to how learning is conceptualized in social
movements by offering a useful differentiation for the learning sciences and
other disciplines (e.g., planning; Meléndez & Parker, 2019).
At the collective level, groups of participants exhibited qualitative changes
in their agency to engage in the practices of PB49. This was evident in their
efforts to conceptualize the needs of Latino participants in the first iteration,
and their claims-making abilities and emergent political imaginaries in
the second. This collective change emerged when participants could engage
in designing for praxis around solving the double-bind of participation.
Based on the examples provided, one can argue that even before the
alderman attended the Spanish-language assembly, those in charge had
collectively learned that participation had to be diversified. The failure in
the first iteration to sustain Latino engagement in PB49 acted as a stimulus
for expansive learning (Engeström & Sannino, 2016). This learning and its
attendant actions held expansive potential for solving the double-bind as
“diverse” was introduced as an abstract concept in need of development. By
the second iteration, the support and lack of meaningful resistance to the
idea of creating an SLC indicates that multiple members of the Leadership
Committee had learned that the mere presence of Latino participants at
meetings was not enough to diversify participation; additional changes to
PB49 practices were needed.
There was also a difference between the beginning and end of the first
iteration regarding the underlying issues of the double-bind—from outreach
and presence, to designing a collective reflective space for deliberation. This
was a difference in knowledge and agency, in how Latino participants’
engagement in PB49 practices was perceived. The change was largely
a result of the collective learning of various LC members who had experi­
enced first-hand the failures of the TPSC to sustain the engagement of Latino
participants during the first iteration. As a result of this sociogenesis, the
proposed intervention was well received, and it instigated the development
of a new activity structure, supporting the claim that during the second
iteration, those in charge of the PB49 process had collectively learned what
was at the root of the double-bind.
Relative to Latino participants’ transformative agency, in the first itera­
tion, it was evident when they had stopped participating as a result of the
circumstances they had encountered. The examples from the second itera­
tion, however, highlighted moments when Latino participants could engage
22 MELÉNDEZ

in PB49 practices and feel as if their roles mattered—not only to the SLC but
to the local Latino community. Collectively, the evidence points to differ­
ences in participants’ personal and social meaning activated and supported
through their agentic engagement (Holland et al., 2001). By highlighting the
difference in claims-making abilities and practices that emerged (sociogen­
esis), the concept of “diverse” became concretized in the SLC by the end of
the second iteration. Now, instead of verbalizing “diverse,” the concept was
embodied through Latino participants’ actions in new practices (Engeström
& Sannino, 2010, 2016). The Latino participants’ engagement in collective
imaginaries of citizenship (Meléndez & Martinez-Cosio, 2019) suggests
a crystallization of their ontogenesis; thus, they exhibited evidence of trans­
formative agency identified through formative interventions. Yet, by tying
transformative agency to claims-making abilities, this study adds a new
political dimension for theorizing agency. These imaginaries of citizenship
included subsequent forms of collective civic engagement (microgenesis),
within PB49 and beyond. The space and ability to imagine community are
important not only for understanding reflexive citizenship, but also for
imagining the potential of communities to spark social movements and
make deliberative democratic processes more equitable (Ellison, 1997;
Young, 2010). Though praxis is not guaranteed in subsequent iterations,
I maintain that these are early indicators of its occurrence in the newly
designed activity structure, since this move toward imagining, or social
dreaming, is a step toward conscientizacion (Freire, 1972). For
a community, individuals’ claims-making suggests an awakened sense of
belonging that could be transferred to other parts of the public sphere as
civic identities are reimagined. Indeed, claims-making may be the key to
having the agency to transform not only one’s actions in democratic activity,
but also the structures of that activity.
Meanwhile, system-level learning arose through changes in practices as
mediated through new artifacts, activity structures, and participants. The
goal of diversifying participation in PB49 signaled the potential for system-
level learning. However, those in charge did not initially take this to mean
altering the practices of PB49 to accommodate participants who needed to
engage differently based on multiple variables, not least of which was language.
Thus, in the first iteration, the object of activity was not expanded, and subject-
to-subject re-mediation remained unchanged, as demonstrated when Latino
participants encountered the municipality’s paradigm of conducting business
in English—which prevented them from engaging with PB49 practices.
This failure, however, did offer opportunities to articulate the double-bind
and to propose an intervention. I argue that the description of the double-
bind in the evaluation meeting provided new language and ideas for enga­
ging Latinos—a form of system-level learning. The notion of designing for
differentiated participation (Meléndez & Martinez-Cosio, 2019; Meléndez &
 JOURNAL OF THE LEARNING SCIENCES 23

Parker, 2019) represented a new conceptual tool adopted by various partici­

pants which acted as a second stimulus for the intervention (Engeström &
Sannino, 2016). This led to the creation of a new activity structure (i.e., the
SLC), with the implicit aim of providing Latinos with a collective reflective
space for deliberation. This implicit goal had system-level outcomes since
Latino participation was framed in agentic terms while becoming an object of
the activity and was re-mediated to take on different meaning from the first
iteration (Bang & Vossoughi, 2016).
Latino participants not only sustained their involvement over an entire
cycle of PB49, but also began to use claims-making language (Abrego, 2011)
that re-mediated their roles vis-a-vis others in PB49 and the community.
They expanded their notions of citizenship in the second iteration when the
park that had been discussed at the planning meeting (from which they had
felt ostracized) became a focus of their own committee work and when they
assessed their involvement in the SLC and the potential it held. I argue that
claims-making by Latino immigrants in the PB49 process was in fact a new
discursive practice that mediated their dispositions, allowing them to
become historical actors (Gutiérrez & Jurow, 2016) as they began to re-
mediate their positionality within the power structures of PB49 and the
community at large.
As a result of the expansive learning achieved through the creation of the
SLC, this article can report lasting impact of resolving the double-bind
through the intervention and of concretizing the concept of “diverse.” Due
to the sustained engagement of Latinos in the second iteration in the
following year, two returning members joined the LC. Though new tensions
arose that had to be resolved, since 2012 the LC membership has included
SLC members. Additionally, the SLC intervention was seen as a jumping-off
point to create a Youth Committee a year later, diversifying the ages of
participants. Lastly, the need to further differentiate participation has led to
the translation of additional PB49 materials into other primary languages
spoken by community residents.
As other wards in Chicago began implementing participatory budgeting,
the SLC became a model for others to emulate in their efforts to diversify
participation. The intervention and concepts described in this article suggest
that the collective learning experience was internalized and that the system-
level learning has been sustained and externalized.5

Conclusion
As Zavala (2016) asserted, the “exploration or conceptualization of design as
social activity is rarely pursued” (p. 238); thus, the opportunity to study PB49
5
In 2018 a new alderwoman was elected to represent the 49th Ward.
24 MELÉNDEZ

was at once serendipitous and strategic. The field needs more learning
scientists deciphering contradictory situations (e.g., how the alderman
spoke versus the engagement options available to Latinos) that hold potential
for praxis. In this research, I did not set out looking for design, but given my
positionality and expertise, I captured in the moment a design phenomenon
possessing elements of collective and system-level learning that were expan­
sive. This was a process of creating political trust (Vakil et al., 2016), or
comradery, across collective entities, requiring time, patience, and engage­
ment in the situated activity. I believe this political trust was achieved in part
by advocating for Latinos’ interests through a shared immigrant and linguis­
tic experience, though such relationships should not be limited solely to
a racial paradigm. Further research is needed that applies the expansive
interventionist framework to the context of other democratic processes to
generate local solutions and practices, expanding on the methodological
approach and concepts presented here.

Acknowledgments
I am grateful to Josh Radinsky, who, for the last 11 years, has collaborated with me as
a mentor, helping me make sense of what my work means for the learning sciences
and the communities I work with. A big thanks to both of the editors for this special
issue; their support of my work was heartening. In particular, I want to thank Susan
Jurow for her generous comments and feedback. I also want to thank Rogers Hall,
who encouraged early conceptual framing of my research and has always cheered on
my bridge-building work within urban planning, and whose own interdisciplinary
research has pushed my imagination of what that work could be. Additionally,
I would like to thank the three reviewers, who went out of their way to offer
constructive yet critical feedback, pushing me to expand my own capacities to
imagine what this article could be.
Last but not least, I want to thank the participants of the 49th Ward. The alderman
and his staff were more than willing to allow me to videotape every meeting
I attended for 3 years. To the participants, whose dedication to the community
should be unquestionable, given the number of volunteer hours they gave. To the
Latino immigrant participants, who trusted in our collaboration and were motivated
to find solutions to the civic engagement challenges we faced. A testament to the
expansive learning nature of their participation!

ORCID
José W. Meléndez http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5775-6069

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