Blocking the Bathroom: Latino Students and the Spatial Arrangements of Student Discipline

Abstract

In this ethnographic study of student discipline in California, I examine the spatial arrangements of the disproportionate discipline, surveillance, and banishment of Latino boys who were constructed as gang members from school and community spaces. Drawing on socio-cultural geographical theories, I argue that negative discourses, and implicit bias, together with increased surveillance in school and public space(s) contributed to the disproportionate discipline of Latino male students.