Graduation Year
2020
Document Type
Open Access Senior Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts
Department
Sociology
Second Department
Special Majors
Reader 1
Azamat Junisbai
Reader 2
Phil Zuckerman
Terms of Use & License Information
Rights Information
©2020 Michael A Springer-Gould
Abstract
Military recruitment in the United States is a highly contentious subject that has yielded a multitude of prior research across a variety of academic concentrations. To further the conversation, I narrow my focus to Southern California’s Inland Empire (IE) to explore practices of military recruitment in high schools that serve students in low-income communities. I begin with a general overview of life and labor in the Inland Empire before moving into prior research on military recruitment. My empirical research consists of five in-depth interviews documenting the lived experiences of individuals hailing from and attending high school in low-income communities of the Inland Empire. Conclusions are drawn affirming the presence of targeted military recruitment in low-income high schools of the IE through participation in the Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (JROTC), as well as resulting from educational policy that has disproportionately restricted academic curriculum in low-income schools. My analysis further explores connections between labor and military recruitment in the IE before concluding with discussions as to how the military strategically utilizes the cultural structure of the IE to target recruits on a personal level.
Recommended Citation
Springer-Gould, Michael, "The Weaponization of Poverty: An Investigation Into United States Military Recruitment Practices In High Schools Of Low-Income Communities In The Inland Empire" (2020). Pitzer Senior Theses. 110.
https://scholarship.claremont.edu/pitzer_theses/110
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Civic and Community Engagement Commons, Community-Based Learning Commons, Community-Based Research Commons, Educational Sociology Commons, Education Policy Commons, Human Rights Law Commons, Inequality and Stratification Commons, Labor Economics Commons, Military and Veterans Studies Commons, Military, War, and Peace Commons, Peace and Conflict Studies Commons, Place and Environment Commons, Quantitative, Qualitative, Comparative, and Historical Methodologies Commons, Regional Sociology Commons, Social Control, Law, Crime, and Deviance Commons, Social Psychology and Interaction Commons
