The Spillover of the Border Spectacle in Schools: Undocumented Youth Navigating Criminalization and Belonging

• In Event: Moscone Center North Roundtable Session 15
  In Roundtable Session: Challenging Educational Spaces and Places for Immigrant Youth in a Time of Heightened Anti-Immigrant Policy

Abstract

Many scholars have highlighted the importance of schools and educational spaces as safe spaces for undocumented youth (Silver 2018; Gonzales 2016; Clark-Ibáñez 2015). Yet, schools become settings where undocumented youth are criminalized mainly because of their immigration status. This paper argues that instead of safe spaces, schools are sites of surveillance and criminalization of undocumented youth when school become an extension of the “border spectacle” (De Genova 2013). Methodologically, I rely on news articles and other media coverage of the 2017 Maryland case where two young Latinx men were wrongly accused of sexually assaulting a young woman inside the school they attended. I also use interviews of lawyers of one of the wrongly accused young men as well as school and community stakeholders to further the arguments proposed in this paper.

This paper contributes a complication of the literature that suggest schools are safe spaces for undocumented youth. Instead, I focus on preventive ways in which schools can be less of an extension of the border to further inclusion of immigrant youth and their families. I propose three main policy solutions to be implemented in the school district where the case study took place. Some of the policies suggested will focus on a larger, structural needed policies. Others will highlight the practicality within schools and school districts.

Author

• Eric Macias, SUNY at Albany