Dissertation Chapter Workshop
Kiara Padilla, American Studies PhD Candidate
“‘Un Desmadre’: Migration, Schooling, and Barrio Youthood, 1979-1990s”
Kiara’s chapter examines the testimonio of her uncle Jose’s early livelihood experiences as a Mexican immigrant barrio youth to show how carcerality, or state-sanctioned detainment and punishment, lies beyond prison and jail institutions and includes nation-state borders, border agents, school divestment in predominantly Brown immigrant communities, and police harassment of Mexican immigrant youth coded as gangs. She argues that Americanization tactics in these early life experiences serve to criminalize immigrants who defy it and eventually weed them out of the nation-state.
With Discussants:
- Robert T. Chase, Associate Professor of History at Stony Brook University
- Michelle Téllez, Associate Professor of Mexican American Studies at the University of Arizona