UK secondary schools under surveillance: the implications for race. A Critical Race and Butlerian analysis

Since September 11th 2001, and the London bombings of July 2005, the ‘war on terror’ has led to the subjection of populations to new regimes of control and reinforced state sovereignty. This involves, in countries such as the UK and the US, the limiting of personal freedoms, increased regulation of immigration and constant surveillance, as a response to the perceived increased risk of terrorist attacks. In this paper I consider new surveillance technologies in secondary schools as a moment in the “war on terror” where recognisability is key to understanding the ways in which populations are racialised. I argue that the counter-terrorism agenda is one of the reasons why schools have invested to such an extent in new technologies of surveillance and explore the implications such surveillance has for the way in which students are raced. The paper applies a framework which combines a Critical Race Theory (CRT) analysis of white supremacy with Judith Butler’s (2004a, 2010) thinking on recognisable lives and Agamben’s (2005) state of exception in order to analyse how minority ethnic young people are constructed as ‘threatening’.
Keywords: Secondary schools, surveillance, counter-terrorism, Critical Race Theory, Judith Butler, state of exception.