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Reviews

Why School Securitization

Fails. Lessons from Morrill
and Musheno’s
Navigating Conflict
Andrés Besserer Rayas - 8 October 2019

Navigating Con ict describes how pupils are able to address

con icts on their own, and how school securitization policies
undermine these e orts.

Reviewed: Calvin Morrill and Michael Musheno, 2018, Navigating Con ict. How Youth Handle Trouble in a High-Poverty
School, Chicago, Chicago University Press

 school / education / con ict / securitization / security / ethnography / United States

“Every day when I walk into the campus, I am greeted by uneasy stares and nervous shouting
reminding me to make sure I do not have keys or a belt or anything that may alert the metal detector,”
a high-school student declared before the New York City Council Budget and Oversight Hearings in
March of 2019 (Make the Road New York 2019). She spoke as part of Make the Road New York, an
organization advocating for an end to ineffective punitive policies in schools and the school-to-prison
pipeline (Urban Youth Collaborative and Center for Popular Democracy 2017). The students who
testi ed wore T‑shirts with a crisp slogan, “Counselors, not Cops.”

Reversing securitization policies in schools requires both countering the belief that poor, multiracial
schools need heavy-handed measures of control, and an understanding of the tools that pupils may
have to manage con ict themselves. Morrill and Musheno’s 2018 book, Navigating Con ict. How Youth
Handle Trouble in a High-Poverty School, based on 16 years of ethnographic research, should emerge as
an essential text for achieving both objectives. Navigating Con ict provides two intertwined analyses.
It rst expounds a theory of how youth can reduce con ict when there is free movement through space
and sociocultural divides, supported by high levels of trust between staff and students. This is a bold 
argument given that most research and policies view young people almost exclusively as the source of
con ict, and not as agents who can defuse it. The second analysis shows how policies that securitize
schools, through the regimentation of space, surveillance, and punitive measures, destroy students’
capacity for managing trouble and can lead to higher levels of con ict on campus. This book
contributes critical insights to the burgeoning scholarship on ending the school-to-prison pipeline
and establishing restorative and transformative justice approaches for addressing school safety.

The rst part of the book argues that if youths can move freely in space (“anchored uidity”), and
there are high levels of trust on campus, students will gain capacity to address con icts on their own
or with recourse to school staff and authorities. According to prevailing notions, New West High
School (NWHS), the pseudonym for the high-poverty multiracial school in Arizona, which is the book’s
case study, should be rife with violence. And yet, during the rst period of the authors’ eldwork (1997
to 2000), it was among the safest and best-performing in its district. The authors nd that the
harmony on campus sprung from a mechanism that students call hangin’ out and movin’ around, and
which the authors label “anchored uidity.”

Anchored uidity works to manage con ict because it allows pupils to move between “frontstage” and
“backstage” interactions. Frontstage interactions happen when students are observed by peers and
staff, whereby they are pressured to follow social roles, and also garner respect and credibility in the
face of threats to their masculinity/femininity, dignity, or sense of vulnerability. Backstage relations
occur when students are under less scrutiny and are thus free of the need to uphold a social reputation
or pre‑established roles. Con icts among adolescents in schools tend to begin in the high stakes of
frontstage scenarios, but, through the use of backstage interactions, young people can diffuse
problems by using peer networks or by asking teachers and staff for help.

Morrill and Musheno have amassed a commendable volume of qualitative evidence through which
they infer how anchored uidity works: their in‑depth ethnographic study (1997–2013) is
complemented by interviews, written accounts and photographs shot by students, in addition to
130 sociospatial maps drawn by pupils. The authors use their rich data to show backstage techniques
used by students to manage trouble. One such technique is “working it out,” where youths seek
intermediary peacemakers to deal with con ict. Alternatively, they may “chill” the problem, which is
to ignore, freeze or diffuse the sources of tension. Students also have the option to communicate—to
security guards, teachers, or other staff—issues they or a peer face before it has swelled into more
serious con ict. Pupils may also engage more active non-physical tactics. They can “go undercover”
and spread malicious gossip, they may attempt to ostracize their counterparts, or they may continue
an escalation of con ict only to back down at the last moment and avoid ghting. Outright physical
violence is a last resort.

Through archival research into 100 years of NWHS history, Morrill and Musheno argue that the school
has long been a site of multicultural inclusion. NWHS was an integrated school during the era of
segregation, and hosted clubs and activities celebrating the Hispanic, Mexican, and African-American
heritage of its students. This history leads many teachers to view building trust with students and
pride in the multiracial makeup of the school as essential to their work. Committed teachers not only
advise student clubs, but also provide “sanctuary classrooms” where students can spend time outside
of the frontstage of campus during breaks and after class, and teachers and students can socialize and
build trust. Committed teachers are key actors in providing the material and institutional means for
anchored uidity.

The second part of Navigating Con ict recounts how, between 1999 and 2005, NWHS adopted school
securitization policies that aligned with the national “safe schools” movement. This movement, which
emerged in the late 1980s, stressed disciplinary measures. Federal funds allowed schools to adopt new
policies to control youth through the transformation of school facilities and increased penalties for 
rule-breaking. Some of the major changes NWHS adopted in this period were: (1) a remaking of space
—lockers and trees were stripped, hallways lit brightly, and the campus was fenced off entirely–to
prevent students from leaving during lunch; (2) cameras were placed throughout the campus;
(3) students were heavily penalized for not being in designated areas or for arriving late to class;
(4) teachers called the police much more often for disciplinary issues; and (5) classroom sanctuaries
were shut down.

These changes eroded anchored uidity. In a 2001 interview, a student recalled: “During lunch, you
can’t listen on the radio. They took away the basketball court. All you can do is sit there. You can’t
have no fun at lunch” (p. 189). In a mapping exercise, a student drew the school as a prison, complete
with barbed wire around the perimeter. Con ned to either the cafeteria or the quad during lunch,
students could “just stare at each other in the lunchroom” (p. 189). “Safe school” policies forced
students into regimented spaces. During this time, NWHS suffered from increased student con icts on
campus—an ironic result given that the policies were adopted under the guise of making the school
safer—and students reported feelings of alienation and hardened ethnic and racial identities.

The “safe schools” policy mobilized the racialized discourse of gang violence as justi cation to
securitize NWHS. African-American and Latinx students were construed as vectors connecting
dangers from the street into the school. The authors connect the speci c decisions of the school
administration with models of neoliberal governance that led to “safe schools” policies nationwide:
disinvestment of public services and an increased use of police interference in minoritized
communities. The conceptual link between students of color and insecurity is also manifest as
disproportionate heavy-handedness and institutionalized discrimination: the researchers show that
Latinx and African-American students made up a much higher proportion of suspension cases than
their relative number in the student body. Students of color, especially male, also expressed the fact
that uneven forms of surveillance were cast over them.

The comparison of the school once it became securitized in the 2000s demonstrates one of the critical
insights of the study: students can be agents of con ict molli cation, but they require institutional
conditions of uidity and trust. The correlate of this nding is that the securitization of schools
perturbs pupils’ access to important resources. These insights are especially meaningful because the
book is substantially weaker when discussing the institutional bases of anchored uidity. The authors
argue that it is made possible by the exceptional commitment of a diverse group of teachers, and a
plethora of extracurricular clubs. While this is plausible, the study not only lacks a comparison with
other schools, it also does not consider alternative explanations including the institutional context
that made it possible for teachers to have autonomy, or the institutional policies that support this
intervention. This is not a minor aw. Without these insights, it is not possible to rule out other
factors that might inform the ndings. And without understanding the structural context for anchored
uidity, it is not possible for schools to reproduce this model.

Another shortcoming refers to the link between “safe schools” policies and how they spread from the
national level into this particular case. The nuanced and detailed account of youths dealing with
trouble are met with meager details about the process of adopting the hardened security policies that
so affected them. One suspects that, had the authors addressed some foundational public-policy
concerns more head on—such as agenda setting, policy dissemination, framing, coalition building—
they would have produced a book that could more fruitfully explain how NWHS adopted
institutionalized racist policies of regimented space.

This aw is connected to another inadequacy: the authors’ limited theorizing about the relationship
between physical space, sociocultural space, and social con ict. Rather, it is left to the reader to
picture how this study’s ndings can inform research on workplaces, institutions, and urban space

itself. The authors could have built from Navigating Con ict a rung from which to elevate their insights
into a productive conversation about the control of space and its intended and unintended
consequences.

Another key problem in the text is that there is not enough attention to race. While Morrill and
Musheno acknowledge the importance of race, they do not engage carefully enough with the critical
literature on race and schooling (Darder 1991; Lason-Billings and Tate 2010). For example, engaging
with Sojoyner (2016), and others’ work about educational enclosures (Schnyder 2010; Wun 2016),
which connects the heavy-handedness of school policies towards students of color with a long history
of race-based enclosure in the US, would have forced the authors to situate their study in a longer
historical trend, and place it beyond the immediacy of NWHS.

Despite these faults, Navigating Con ict provides a clear analysis of the pernicious outcomes of
securitizing schools. It contributes to addressing the school-to-prison pipeline crisis that is affecting
schools across the nation (Bahena et al. 2012; Meiners 2016; Simon 2007), as called for by
organizations such as Make the Road New York (Make the Road New York 2017). The book offers
insights into a broader scholarship on alternative practices for addressing school safety including the
restorative- and transformative-justice approaches (González 2012; Hopkins 2004; Winn 2018). One
hopes that, in addition to an expanded readership, Navigating Con ict is emulated in its meticulosity
of research and that its theories and concepts are taken up, re ned, and elaborated upon by other
scholars, and especially by activists who are ghting against the inequities of securitized schools.

Bibliography

Bahena, Sofía; Cooc, North; Currie-Rubin, Rachel; Kuttner, Paul; and Ng, Monica (eds.). 2012.
Disrupting the School-To-Prison-Pipeline, Cambridge (Massachusetts): Harvard Educational Review.
Darder A. 1991. Culture and Power in the Classroom: A Critical Foundation for Bicultural Education,
Westport: Bergin & Garvey.
González, Thalía. 2012. “Keeping Kids in Schools: Restorative Justice, Punitive Discipline, and the
School-to-Prison Pipeline”, Journal of Law & Education, vol. 41, no. 2, pp. 281–335.
Hopkins, Belinda. 2004. Just Schools. A Whole-School Approach to Restorative Justice, London: Jessica
Kingsley Publishers.
Jay M. 2003. “Critical race theory, multicultural education, and the hidden curriculum of
hegemony”, Multicultural Perspectives, vol. 5, no. 4, pp. 3–10.
Ladson-Billings, Gloria and Tate, William F. 2010. “Toward a Critical Race Theory of Education”, in
Dixson, Adrienne; Rousseau Anderson, Celia; and Donnor, Jamel (eds.), Critical Race Theory in
Education, New York: Routledge.
Make the Road New York. 2019. Participation in New York City Council Budget and Oversight Hearings
on the Fiscal Year 2020 Preliminary Budget. Committee on Education, 20 March.
Meiners, Erica. 2016. For the Children? Protecting Innocence in a Carceral State, Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press.
Morrill, Calvin and Musheno, Michael. 2018. Navigating Con ict. How Youth Handle Trouble in a
High-Poverty School, Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Simon, Jonathan. 2007. Governing Through Crime. How the War on Crime Transformed American
Democracy and Created a Culture of Fear, New York: Oxford University Press.
Sojoyner, Damien. 2016. First Strike. Educational Enclosures in Black Los Angeles, Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press.
Urban Youth Collaborative and Center for Popular Democracy. 2017. The $746 Million-a-Year School-
to-Prison Pipeline: The Ineffective, Discriminatory, and Costly Process of Criminalizing New York City
Students, New York: Urban Youth Collaborative and The Center for Popular Democracy.
Schnyder, Damien. 2010. “Enclosures abound: Black cultural autonomy, prison regime and public 
education, Race Ethnicity and Education”, Race, Ethnicity and Education, vol. 13, no. 3, pp. 349–365.
 Winn, Maisha T. 2018. Justice on Both Sides. Transforming Education Through Restorative Justice,
Cambridge (Massachusetts): Harvard Education Press.
Wun, Connie. 2015. “Against Captivity: Black Girls and School Discipline Policies in the Afterlife of
Slavery”, Educational Policy, vol. 30, no. 1, pp. 171–196.

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school education con ict securitization security ethnography

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To cite this article:

Andrés Besserer Rayas, “Why School Securitization Fails. Lessons from Morrill and Musheno’s Navigating Con ict”, Metropolitics, 8 October 2019.
URL : https://metropolitics.org/Why-School-Securitization-Fails-Lessons-from-Morrill-and-Musheno-s-Navigating.html

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