bfunk's bookmarks tagged carceral urbanism

The readings for one of my seminars have recently focused on urban issues surrounding racism and law enforcement. I was happy to find a long list of supplemental material under bfunk’s carceral urbanism tag.

The best two sentences I’ve read for class today highlight the difficulty of finding employment if you’re an ex-offender in the United States:

In another striking example of the creative remaking of worker identities within this racially structured contingent economy, it was reported that some Latino ex-offenders would on occasion pass themselves off as undocumented workers, in order to gain access to the word-of-mouth recruitment channels and labor corners that have been organized around the undocumented population. The kind of work that can be accessed through these means tends to be extremely exploitative and often dangerous, but by the standards of the ex-offender labor market it is comparatively plentiful.

From Peck, J., & Theodore, N. (2008). Carceral Chicago: Making the Ex-offender Employability Crisis. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 32(2), 251-281. [available here behind a paywall]