Phattra Marbang is a doctoral candidate at the Department of Sociology, UGA. Her dissertation explores the relationship between the competing logics of international education and national security. To add to the immigration control, racial state, and street-level bureaucrats literature, she approached the questions of controlling and racial/ethnic others by focusing on a group of documented immigrants—international students—and the surveillance processes that determine what kinds of people deserve to participate in American higher education and social life. She examines how national security discourse works its way into universities, the discretion of international student advisors, and what it means for campus diversity in the globalized world.

Based on in-depth interviews with international student advisors and event ethnography at conferences and workshops for international educators, her research directly speaks to the crimmigration of international students done at the federal level and the resistance advocated by advisors and the international education field.