Absent and present: Biopolitics and the materiality of body counts on the US–Mexico border

As the deaths of undocumented migrants expose the violence of border security policies around the globe, a complicated politics emerges between bodily death and the ways in which the migrant association of decedents (dis)appears in vital records – even as many migrants physically disappear during th...

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書目詳細資料
主要作者: Soto, Gabriella (Author)
格式: 電子 Article
語言:English
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出版: Sage Publ. 2021
In: Journal of material culture
Year: 2021, 卷: 26, 發布: 1, Pages: 43-63
Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains:B USA / Mexiko / 邊界 / 非法入境 / 死亡 / 統計
IxTheo Classification:KBQ North America
ZA Social sciences
ZB Sociology
ZC Politics in general
Further subjects:B Materiality
B 遷移
B US–Mexico border
B Biopolitics
B forensic evidence
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實物特徵
總結:As the deaths of undocumented migrants expose the violence of border security policies around the globe, a complicated politics emerges between bodily death and the ways in which the migrant association of decedents (dis)appears in vital records – even as many migrants physically disappear during their border crossings. What happens between death and bureaucratic disappearance after a migrant body is discovered? How does the overwhelming material presence of migrant death, someone who dies through an unnecessary and excruciating process like drowning or dehydration during a border crossing, become not-a-migrant? This article considers these questions by exploring the materiality of body counts at the nexus of biopolitics, forensic anthropology, and material culture studies. To probe the process behind migrants’ seemingly systematized bureaucratic postmortem disappearance, this ethnographic case study of local postmortem investigations of migrant deaths at the US–Mexico border examines practices around burial or cremation and body discovery.
ISSN:1460-3586
Contains:Enthalten in: Journal of material culture
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1177/1359183520959397