Transforming Voices: reimagining organizational vulnerabilities of Mexican women in tourism through experimental audio-visual research

Purpose:
The purpose of this paper is to analyse how collaborative audiovisual research methods can be used to study women’s organizational practices in tourism within the Mexican–US borderlands. By discussing the process of creating short films using an experimental methodology, the paper explores how audiovisual research can help articulate women’s vulnerability as an intersectional phenomenon. The authors argue that such articulation can benefit not only researchers but also participants, enabling all to express and share experiences and perspectives that may not conform to established paradigms of representing women’s vulnerability. The paper demonstrates how audiovisual research can foster a deeper understanding of organizational vulnerability and enhance the broader impact of research on this topic.

Design/methodology/approach:
The research project was based on experimental collaborative filmmaking. An online platform (Transforming Voices, 2024) was used for the co-production and dissemination of experimental short films using aural testimonies of participants discussing their experiences of gendered vulnerabilities when working in the borderlands between Mexico and the USA (particularly, though not exclusively, in the region of Tijuana). The project was divided into four consecutive phases: the production of 23 interviews in Spanish; the extraction and editing of audio excerpts from the interviews, resulting in the production of over 35 short narrative soundtracks; the production of 30 short films in collaboration with musicians and filmmakers from all over the world; and a series of film screening events with Tijuana’s communities, including research participants.

Findings:
Findings show that experimental co-produced audio-visual works can be helpful when elucidating complex intersectional dimensions of the challenges and dynamics of women organizational practices in tourism and hospitality. Segregation and stereotypification are made evident in these complexities, making it possible for women to share their organizational experiences broadly. Participants of this project expressed that Transforming Voices was particularly successful at transmitting the permanence and repetitive nature of women’s vulnerability, even in changing organizational circumstances.

Research limitations/implications;
The methodology yielded important opportunities in terms of participatory consent and availability. By anonymizing participants and not using their images participants felt safer sharing their testimony and more in control of their own narratives. However, there is a potential risk of making primary participants invisible and only indirectly represented by other co-participants.

Practical implications:
Foregrounding voice can be a practical way to work with participants as authors and co-creators while avoiding forms of victimization and subalternation, which might result from greater visibility. These methodologies encourage a focus on what is said, rather than on who speaks, and reflection on the account rather than on the contexts in which it is said.

Social implications:
Research has highlighted the need to empower women involved in tourist activities through initiatives such as entrepreneurship education. The authors see that methodologies such as the one used for Transforming Voices could be useful in this regard, as they not only create a forum for hitherto silenced discourses but also opportunities where participants, artists and filmmakers can collaborate in ways that favour experimentation and, therefore, creative forms of empowerment where original distributions of authorship, voice, vulnerabilities and resistances might be performed.

Originality/value:
The originality of this audio-visual research methodology resides in its capacity to dramatize, rather than just capture and convey, women’s experiences of organizational vulnerability, a difficult topic of inquiry and dissemination. Sounds and music, in conjunction with the images and visual tracks, result in decentred and highly affective artworks, which aesthetically amplify, expand on, complicate and qualify the participants’ testimonies. Produced in sequence by a multi-ethnic and multidisciplinary group of researchers, musicians, participants and filmmakers, Transforming Voices became a valuable and stimulating way of engaging through audio-visual interaction and reflecting on vulnerabilities in the tourism workplace.