How a Scholarship Girl Becomes a Soldier: The Militarization of Latina/O Youth in Chicago Public Schools

Decoding Youth and Neo-Liberalism: Pupils, Precarity, and Punishment

“…The impact of military presence in schools is evident across racial lines and geography, affecting minority students in urban neighborhoods as well as poor, rural White students (Wall, 2010). As Gina Pérez (2006) suggests, military recruitment is more manageable "through promises of economically secure futures for impoverished and working-class families, and with assurances that values such as discipline, Downloaded by [Tufts University] at 11:58 09 December 2014 loyalty, and tenacity will translate into better youth, families, personal success, and secure economic futures," (p. 54), a point that is especially salient given the neoliberal manifestations of self-entrepreneurialism and personal responsibility.…”

Children, childhoods, and everyday militarisms

“…The indeterminancy of these everyday knowledges is exposed, however, by the fact that a great deal of gendered, raced, and classed work is necessary to the (re)production of their underlying ontologies. This includes ideas about who constitutes danger in our world (Brocklehurst, 2011) as well as where efforts are directed for military recruitment ostensibly undertaken in answer to those dangers (Basham, 2016; Enloe, 2015; Pérez, 2006; Wells, 2014), and the gendered, raced, and classed particulars of the types of bodies targeted in both cases. It is revealed too in the ready association of militarized childhoods with the Global South while the North not only has drawn much less scrutiny in this regard but is, in part, constituted in global moral orders by its positioning in presumed distinction from the South along these very lines (Cole, 2012; Lee-Koo, 2011; Macmillan, 2009).…”

Deferred Enrollment: Chicano/Latino Males, Social Mobility and Military Enlistment

“…Researchers in opposition to military recruitment argue low-income and segregated social conditions creates a “poverty draft” that leaves students with limited options, and reluctantly debating between enlisting in the military, going to community college without sufficient financial support, or working in minimum wage jobs (Ayers, 2006; Mariscal, 2005; Perez, 2006). For students that attend overcrowded and underresourced high schools, the prospect of attending college may seem limited and may consider the military the only financially viable and second-best option behind higher education (Huerta, 2015; Flanagan & Levine, 2010; Kleykamp, 2006; Perez, 2006). However, a study conducted by Dempsey and Shapiro (2009) found that the most common cause for Chicano/Latino enlistment in the military was “a desire to serve my country” (24%), followed by the security and stability of a job (15%) and educational benefits (12%).…”