Unravelling the school punitive web: The school-to-prison pipeline in the context of the gendered shadow carceral state
Social Justice. A Journal of Crime, Conflict & World Order (in press)
Andrea Roman Alfaro & Jerry Flores
Education researchers and policymakers popularized the “school-to-prison pipeline” metaphor to understand the connection between school failure and youth incarceration in the U.S. However, the metaphor has been criticized for simplifying schools’ role in creating and enlarging the carceral state. Based on Latina girls’ experiences attending a community day school in California, this study shows how alternative education programs facilitate the annexation of schools within the criminal justice system, enclosing Latina girls in a gendered web of punitive threads. Alternative education and its programs are best understood as shadow carceral innovations that expand the carceral state beyond prison walls.
Building the settler-colonial order: Police (in)action in responding to violence against Indigenous women in “Canada”
Gender & Society (in press)
Jerry Flores & Andrea Roman Alfaro*
No one exactly knows how many missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls and 2SLGBTQQIA people are in what is now called “Canada.” Estimates suggest that around 4000 Indigenous women and girls and 600 Indigenous men and boys have gone missing or been murdered between 1956 and 2016. Although prior research has pointed to the role state institutions have played in the disappearance and murder of Indigenous women, girls and 2SLGBTQQIA people, only few studies have theorized about the narratives police employ to respond to this violence. Using a broad data sample of testimonies across “Canada,” our paper contributes to understanding how police (in)actions make sense, justify, and dismiss violence against Indigenous women, girls and 2SLGBTQQIA people. We draw from 48 in-depth semi-structured interviews with Indigenous peoples in Toronto and other “Canadian” cities and 219 testimonies from the Canadian National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (NIMMIWG) to analyze police verbal interactions and behaviors when dealing with Indigenous and non-Indigenous people in the context of violence against Indigenous women. We find that Canadian police repeatedly used similar frames (topics), styles (linguistic and behavioral strategies), and storylines (narratives) to respond to violence against Indigenous women. While framing Indigenous women, girls and 2SLGBTQQIA people as “runaways,” “drunks,” “drug addicts,” and “prostitutes” helped police make sense of and explain violence against Indigenous women, police used verbal and behavioral strategies (indifference, callousness, and lack of information) and storylines (she was [insert pathologizing frame]” and “there’s nothing we can do”) to dismiss and justify this violence. We argue that the frames, styles, and storylines employed by police show how what police say, tell, and do or do not produce and reproduce violence against Indigenous women, girls and 2SLGBTQQIA people. Police (in)actions are fundamental to achieving settler colonialism’s ideological and material dimensions.
*Equal authorship
Pedagogy of Love and Care: Mutual Aid, Solidarity and Liberatory Education across the University
Curriculum Inquiry (2022)
Jerry Flores & Andrea Roman Alfaro
Critical pedagogy scholars have described teaching as an act of love. This love is not a trivial emotion but a conscious action that demonstrates care, respect, honesty, listening, and solidarity. However, translating love and other principles of critical pedagogy into the classroom can be complex and painful. This paper discusses our pedagogical experiences of love and care inside and outside classrooms. Our reflections on working in a juvenile detention center and a food justice mutual aid project show how understanding love, care, and solidarity as actions have been essential for working with our communities. At the same time, our experiences pose questions about the complexities and possibilities of loving and caring in precarious and totalitarian circumstances. We contribute to thinking about the application of critical pedagogy beyond school classrooms.
Experiencia educativa y tolerancia política: Entendiendo la relación desde el análisis de una muestra de estudiantes universitarios peruanos
[Educational experience and political tolerance: Understanding the relationship from the analysis of a sample of Peruvian university students]
International Journal of Education for Social Justice* (2016)
Lars Stojnic Chavez & Andrea Roman Alfaro
The fate of a democracy depends, in part, on the “intrinsic commitment of ordinary people with respect to various democratic principles” (Welzel & Inglehart, 2009, p. 297). This article seeks to identify if having studied more semesters in university would be a factor of influence concerning higher levels of political tolerance or, if rather, the inclusion of a curricular proposal that explicitly addresses contents on citizenship and democracy would have a greater effect. The results indicate that a course oriented to question them about their citizenship exercise would have a positive and significant effect in their levels of political tolerance, as opposed to the number of accumulated academic semesters.