Illegal, Violent, and Scandalous: Navigating Criminalized Citizenship in the Securitized School

• In Event: 225 - Section on Latino/a Sociology Paper Session. Latino/a Crimmigration Politics

Abstract

Record high deportation and incarceration rates are the most apparent forms of state carcerality, however it truly consists of growing surveillance and punishment in a wide variety of contexts, including schools. Recent studies show the experience of being continuously surveyed and punitively disciplined by the criminal justice system-- even when it does not result in a criminal arrest-- informs people they are “custodial citizens” and politically marginalizes them. Navigating criminalization is one way many young people learn they do not have full citizenship rights; instead they learn they are custodial citizens. I illustrate how this type of problem continues into the school context, showing how the “securitized school” develops many youth as custodial citizens. For this paper, I draw on interview and ethnographic data I collected in conducting a case study of a low-income high immigration suburban high school in the northeastern United States. This paper highlights how criminalization of immigration was a key factor in how the immigrant Latino students experienced school discipline—whether they had immigration papers or not. Though in many ways scholars recognize intensified school surveillance and discipline, youth criminalization has both shifted in this period-- particularly in immigration—and racialized citizenship outcomes have generally been overlooked. I examine how the “securitized school” shaped Black and Latino students in similar and different ways as custodial citizens, and put these students into conflict with one another.

Author

• Erin Michaels, The Graduate Center at the City University of New York,