At this political moment within the university, mass incarceration and its most recognizable constituents, the prisoner and the prison, are at a predictable tipping point: the violence of inclusion. Neoliberal multiculturalism appears capacious enough to hold select representations of mass incarceration in its pursuit of new markets and deft enough to deploy this difference to whitewash other forms of institutional violence. Building from a long genealogy of scholarship and organizing that maps the coconstitutiveness of the university with our prison-industrial complex, Underground Work makes visible emergent lines and arrangements of power and resistance that inhibit and build abolition.

To that end, Work intervenes by problematizing formerly incarcerated subjectivity in the university. Institutional liberal promises cannot be delinked from processes of labor reproduction and racial capitalism. Beyond the neoliberal formation of higher education lies deeper contradictions endemic to enlightenment thought. Work relies on neo-Marxist thought, known as value form theory, to trouble the technologies of possessive individualism and value by suggesting that labor as the value form must be abolished. Work introduces new theory to explain the disciplining features of the carceral state vis-a-vis the political economy and convicted people’s relationship to it. Work claims that we, as convicted people, experience a shadow consciousness. Shadow consciousness exposes how our subjectivities are under threat, especially during moments of crisis and political resistance to state violence. Through an analysis of carcerality, labor and resistance, Work exposes the state sponsored projects intended to discipline our political agency in more detail. Despite the limitations that the framework exposes, we are not without agency. Because of the looming threat of rearrest, shadow consciousness understands the power of clandestine organizing. It is often in the shadows that formerly incarcerated and especially incarcerated people can organize. Though this framing borrows heavily from W. E. B. DuBois’ concept of double consciousness, shadow consciousness involves the purposeful evading of state surveillance as a political project, and this differentiates it from double consciousness.

How does disability rights law map on to the lives of law students with non-apparent disabilities? This case study uses legal analysis of case law to show how the law maps on to the lives of two law students with non-apparent disabilities. The study takes place in one public law school in California. It explores the prevalence of the stigma surrounding disability in law school compelling law students to continue trying to pass as able-bodied, sending a constant message that their unique gifts and perspective do not matter, as long as they continue to pass. The Department of Justice’s Operation Varsity Blues is prosecuting one of the largest college admission scams of wealthy students faking disabilities, makes this study all the more relevant adding to the stigma around non-apparent disabilities; viewing such students as frauds trying to game the system, not smart, and a drain of resources.

The challenges in recruiting for the study highlighted the deep-rooted fear in talking about their disability all the more supported by legal precedent that acknowledged “professional stigma” if a student is found out. A normative law is proposed to help combat the environment that creates the reluctance of law students to speak out against their current marginalization. Laws are necessary but at times not sufficient. Thus this proposal cautions the reader to keep in mind that the law alone is not enough, but it is a first step in attempting to mitigate the repression of students with non-apparent disabilities in the hopes of remedying their unequal share in our democracy, in turn, strengthening it. The countless obstacles encountered by these law students at times creates a perfect legal advocate because these students have had to advocate for themselves in an imperfect world. Law students with non-apparent disabilities do not have the Varsity Blues because they are perfectly imperfect.

Executive Summary

There are 1.6 million English learners (ELs) in California’s K-12 public schools, comprising a quarter of California public school students and thirty percent of EL students in the United States. Our study provides strong evidence that California school districts are misidentifying large numbers of entering kindergarten students as English learners. California’s home language survey over identifies children to be administered the California English Language Development Test (CELDT). Because only about 94 percent of kindergarten students taking the CELDT in 2009-10 were classified English language proficient, being identified to take the CELDT almost guarantees a student’s classification as EL. Our findings call into question the validity of the home language survey and the CELDT as the tools for identifying EL students in California.

EL misidentification is important because it means that these students are not receiving the language support and education that is appropriate to their language skills. In addition, in an era of budget crises, it becomes especially vital that scarce language development resources be targeted as effectively as possible. The wide net currently being cast by California’s EL classification system in some ways renders the classification itself meaningless, given its application to such a wide range of students. Part of the problem is that there is no clear definition of what constitutes “an English language learner” (Abedi 2008, Abedi & Gándara 2006). That definition is left to district interpretation, resulting in significant variability in classification criteria and rates across the state.

This paper examines the effects of the rescission announcement of the DACA program on the health outcomes of Latino DACA recipients in California. Research shows that undocumented immigrants face poorer health outcomes than their documented counterparts and U.S. citizens, and that being offered legal status (e.g. DACA) considerably improves their health outcomes. Even though studies have examined the impact of shifting legal status on incorporation, to our knowledge no studies have considered the effects of announcing the rescission of the DACA program on its recipients. However, this is important because it may have implications on their health outcomes. This study addresses this gap by using in-depth interviews with 43 Latino DACA recipients living in the California San Francisco Bay Area in 2017 and 2018. Our findings suggest that rescission announcement of DACA has led to worsening health outcomes for DACA recipients. Specifically, we find that it created what we call a state of transitory legality among the 1.5 generation, which causes DACA recipients to experience health outcomes that are worse than those before DACA. Our results are important in the field of sociology, public policy and heath care because they show the negative effects of reversing inclusionary immigration policies on the health outcomes of undocumented Latino immigrants.

Within educational research, the over-disciplining of Black

and Brown students is most often presented as a problem located

within pathologized or misunderstood communities. That is,

theories and proposed solutions tend toward those that ask how

we can make students of color more suited to US educational

standards rather than questioning the racist roots of those

standards. This dissertation takes as a provocation this

“discipline gap,” in exploring a thus far unconsidered stance

and asking how white women (the majority of US teachers) have

historically understood their roles in the disciplining of

nonwhite student bodies, and how and why their role has been

constructed over time and space in service to the white colonial

State. Toward this end, I take a genealogical approach in making

sense of a contemporary phenomenon by asking, “How and why has

the persona of the benevolent white female teacher been put into

discourse during the foundational period in public schools’

history, and how has it been reproduced over time, specifically

in relation to students of color?” With this perspective, my

project helps to fill a much-overlooked void in the contemporary

conversation on raced and gendered student-teacher interactions

in schools.

This project employs two main methodologies: (1) close

readings informed by literary theory, and (2) Foucauldian

discourse analysis, which I use in constructing a genealogy of

heroic white womanhood (what I am calling “benevolent

whiteness”). Using these methods I analyze the archival writings

of and about white missionary women in the 19th century to

explain how the collective acceptance of and participation in

the discursive construction of heroic white womanhood has been

the normative underpinnings of US educational and disciplinary

practice for nearly two hundred years. Toward this end, this

project serves to refocus whiteness within current debates on

the over-disciplining of students of color toward a historical

and structural analysis with a goal of understanding, refusing,

and reimagining the roles of white female teachers.