Matching Items (3)
Filtering by
- All Subjects: Sociology
Description
In the United States, responsibility for public safety falls under the purview of federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies. These agencies use a range of strategies to ensure public safety, relying primarily on surveillance, the police, the jail and prison system, and the courts to adjudicate wrongdoing. The United States’ over-reliance on incarceration as an all-encompassing solution to social problems, paired with persistent police violence that disproportionately results in the death of Indigenous, African American, and Latino/a people, has placed these public safety practices under intense scrutiny. There has been a plethora of research examining the crisis of mass incarceration in particular, and the racial, class, and gendered inequities plaguing the criminal justice system more broadly.
Through the (Re)imagining Public Safety Project, I make two primary interventions in this larger body of work. First, this is an abolitionist project. In other words, I ask how people generate safety in their daily lives without relying on the police, or prisons, or criminalization. Second, in developing these alternatives, I center the perspective of people of color who have been directly impacted by racially discriminatory public safety practices. To do so, I designed a collaborative, mixed-method qualitative research project that uses participant-generated photo elicitation interviews, alongside participant observation to (re)imagine public safety. Participants in this project theorized what I am calling “insurgent safety” to describe an alternative practice of safety that is underwritten by what I term “a public ethic of care,” “counter-carceral communication,” and play. Insurgent safety is the presence of self-determination, interdependence, mutual aid, shared vulnerability, joy, and communion rather than walls, cages, and banishment.
Through the (Re)imagining Public Safety Project, I make two primary interventions in this larger body of work. First, this is an abolitionist project. In other words, I ask how people generate safety in their daily lives without relying on the police, or prisons, or criminalization. Second, in developing these alternatives, I center the perspective of people of color who have been directly impacted by racially discriminatory public safety practices. To do so, I designed a collaborative, mixed-method qualitative research project that uses participant-generated photo elicitation interviews, alongside participant observation to (re)imagine public safety. Participants in this project theorized what I am calling “insurgent safety” to describe an alternative practice of safety that is underwritten by what I term “a public ethic of care,” “counter-carceral communication,” and play. Insurgent safety is the presence of self-determination, interdependence, mutual aid, shared vulnerability, joy, and communion rather than walls, cages, and banishment.
ContributorsMcDowell, Meghan (Author) / Lim, Merlyna (Thesis advisor) / Cheng, Wendy (Thesis advisor) / Fernández, Luis (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
Low-income communities of color in the U.S. today are often vulnerable to displacement, forced relocation away from the places they call home. Displacement takes many forms, including immigration enforcement, mass incarceration, gentrification, and unwanted development. This dissertation juxtaposes two different examples of displacement, emphasizing similarities in lived experiences. Mixed methods including document-based research, map-making, visual ethnography, participant observation, and interviews were used to examine two case studies in Phoenix, Arizona: (1) workplace immigration raids, which overwhelmingly target Latino migrant workers; and (2) the Loop 202 freeway, which would disproportionately impact Akimel O'odham land. Drawing on critical geography, critical ethnic studies, feminist theory, carceral studies, and decolonial theory, this research considers: the social, economic, and political causes of displacement, its impact on the cultural and social meanings of space, the everyday practices that allow people to survive economically and emotionally, and the strategies used to organize against relocation.
Although raids are often represented as momentary spectacles of danger and containment, from a worker's perspective, raids are long trajectories through multiple sites of domination. Raids' racial geographies reinforce urban segregation, while traumatization in carceral space reduces the power of Latino migrants in the workplace. Expressions of care among raided workers and others in jail and detention make carceral spaces more livable, and contribute to movement building and abolitionist sentiments outside detention.
The Loop 202 would result in a loss of native land and sovereignty, including clean air and a mountain sacred to O'odham people. While the proposal originated with corporate desire for a transnational trade corridor, it has been sustained by local industry, the perceived inevitability of development, and colonial narratives about native people and land. O'odham artists, mothers, and elders counter the freeway's colonial logics through stories that emphasize balance, collective care over individual profit, and historical consciousness.
Both raids and the freeway have been contested by local grassroots movements. Through political education, base-building, advocacy, lawsuits, and protest strategies, community organizations have achieved changes in state practice. These movements have also worked to create alternative spaces of safety and home, rooted in interpersonal care and Latino and O'odham culture.
Although raids are often represented as momentary spectacles of danger and containment, from a worker's perspective, raids are long trajectories through multiple sites of domination. Raids' racial geographies reinforce urban segregation, while traumatization in carceral space reduces the power of Latino migrants in the workplace. Expressions of care among raided workers and others in jail and detention make carceral spaces more livable, and contribute to movement building and abolitionist sentiments outside detention.
The Loop 202 would result in a loss of native land and sovereignty, including clean air and a mountain sacred to O'odham people. While the proposal originated with corporate desire for a transnational trade corridor, it has been sustained by local industry, the perceived inevitability of development, and colonial narratives about native people and land. O'odham artists, mothers, and elders counter the freeway's colonial logics through stories that emphasize balance, collective care over individual profit, and historical consciousness.
Both raids and the freeway have been contested by local grassroots movements. Through political education, base-building, advocacy, lawsuits, and protest strategies, community organizations have achieved changes in state practice. These movements have also worked to create alternative spaces of safety and home, rooted in interpersonal care and Latino and O'odham culture.
ContributorsDiddams, Margaret (Author) / Bolin, Bob (Thesis advisor) / Fonow, Mary Margaret (Committee member) / Cheng, Wendy (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
The intention of this research is to bring us to Worcester, Massachusetts, New England's second largest city, to critically investigate the punitive patterns that exist in the "second chance" opportunity structure experienced by young people who have been dropped-out of schools. The conceptual framework I've constructed pulls from developed theories on the relationship between structural processes, institutional practices and lived experiences of marginalization. There is a need to understand how the process of school leaving, the label of "dropout," and the pursuit of second-chance opportunity are connected and exercise forms of punishment that have clear messages about the worth of these young men's aspirations and the value in fostering support for their opportunities. This critical ethnography introduces the narratives of four young men, marginalized by race and class, whose pursuits of alternative education pathways in Worcester, MA lead them towards constructing an inclusive opportunity on one's own terms. My assertion here is that the social issue is not exclusively about "dropouts," but about the relationships our schools, neighborhoods and society at large have on creating the enabling conditions of opportunity for our most marginalized students.
ContributorsBegin, Meshia (Author) / Lopez, Vera (Thesis advisor) / Cheng, Wendy (Committee member) / Sandlin, Jennifer (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014