Carceral Campuses: Colleges as Sites of Surveillance and Policing of Undocumented Students and Allies

• In Event: The Carceral University: The Intimate Relationship Between Higher Education and State-Sanctioned Policing

Abstract

Increasingly schools and universities have declared themselves as sanctuary spaces for undocumented students and allies have become emboldened to identify themselves as such, and their campuses as “undocu-friendly” (United We Dream, 2015). While these examples are important markers of progress, with regards to undocumented immigration, our efforts are missing a very important point, which is institutions of education rely on mechanisms of policing to control campus life (Ali & Buenavista, 2018; Chatterjee & Maira, 2014). In this paper I conceptualize the idea of “carceral campuses,” using data from a discourse analysis of local newspapers; campus publications; publicly available statements and correspondence, and actual social actions by administrators, faculty, and students, over a one-year period at a four-year, Hispanic-Serving Institution serving more than 1,500 undocumented students in the Los Angeles area. In education, discourse analysis is a qualitative method in which researchers systematically analyze multiple forms of “text” (e.g., written or interactional) in an attempt to understand how learning is contextual and shaped (and shaped by) larger social systems (Warriner & Anderson, 2017). Through discourse analysis, I argue that postsecondary institutions are carceral campuses, or those that formally and informally promote the criminalization, surveillance, and punishment of its students, faculty, and staff; and in such a way that is reflective of and/or in partnership with formal policing entities. The idea of carceral campuses challenges dominant understandings of colleges and universities as spaces of social and political exceptionalism, and push higher education scholars and practitioners to acknowledge this as necessary to holistically and realistically addressing the postsecondary barriers for undocumented students.

Authors

• Tracy Lachica Buenavista, California State University - Northridge

• Alex Ojeda, Los Angeles Valley College