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...
| Published in: | Journal of material culture |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
|
| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Sage Publ.
2021
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| In: |
Journal of material culture
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| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
USA
/ Mexico
/ Boundary
/ Illegal immigration
/ Death
/ Statistics
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| RelBib Classification: | KBQ North America ZA Social sciences ZB Sociology ZC Politics in general |
| Further subjects: | B
Materiality
B Migration B US–Mexico border B Biopolitics B forensic evidence |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | 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. |
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| ISSN: | 1460-3586 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Journal of material culture
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1177/1359183520959397 |