Sociopolitics of Migrant Death and Repatriation [electronic resource] : Perspectives from Forensic Science /
Latham, Krista E.editor.
O'Daniel, Alyson J.editor.
As scholars have by now long contended, global neoliberalism and the violence associated with state restructuring provide key frameworks for understanding flows of people across national boundaries and, eventually, into the treacherous terrains of the United States borderlands. The proposed volume builds on this tradition of situating migration and migrant death within broad, systems-level frameworks of analysis, but contends that there is another, perhaps somewhat less tidy, but no less important sociopolitical story to be told here. Through examination of how forensic scientists define, navigate, and enact their work at the frontiers of US policy and economics, this book joins a robust body of literature dedicated to bridging social theory with bioarchaeological applications to modern day problems. This volume is based on deeply and critically reflective analyses, submitted by individual scholars, wherein they navigate and position themselves as social actors embedded within and, perhaps partially constituted by, relations of power, cultural ideologies, and the social structures characterizing this moment in history. Each contribution addresses a different variation on themes of power relations, production of knowledge, and reflexivity in practice. In sum, however, the chapters of this book trace relationships between institutions, entities, and individuals comprising the landscapes of migrant death and repatriation and considers their articulation with sociopolitical dynamics of the neoliberal state.
Includes bibliographical references at the end of each chapters and index.
Forward -- Preface -- Part I: Beyond Local Jurisdictions: Science in a Global Web of Relations -- Chapter 1: Introduction -- Chapter 2: All that Remains -- Chapter 3: Capitalism and Crisis in Central America -- Chapter 4: Naming State Crimes, Naming the Dead: Immigration Policy and “the New Disappeared” in the United States and Mexico -- Chapter 5: Loss, Uncertainty and Action: Ethnographic Encounters with Families of the Missing in the Central America-Mexico-US Corridor -- Chapter 6: The Geography of Migrant Death: Implications for Policy and Forensic Science -- Chapter 7: “Follow the Power Lines Until You Hit a Road:” Contextualizing Humanitarian Forensic Science in South Texas -- Part II: Producing and Situating Forensic Science Knowledge -- Chapter 8: Digging, Dollars and Drama: The Economics of Forensic Archaeology and Migrant Exhumation -- Chapter 9: Expanding the Role of Forensic Anthropology in a Humanitarian Crisis: An Example from the United States-Mexico Border -- Chapter 10: Identifying Difference: Forensic Methods and the Uneven Playing Field of Repatriation -- Chapter 11: Bodies in Limbo: Issues in Identification and Repatriation of Migrant Remains in South Texas -- Chapter 12: Dialog across States & Agencies: Juggling Ethical Concerns of Forensic Anthropologists north of the U.S.-Mexico Border -- Chapter 13: Charting Future Directions.
As scholars have by now long contended, global neoliberalism and the violence associated with state restructuring provide key frameworks for understanding flows of people across national boundaries and, eventually, into the treacherous terrains of the United States borderlands. The proposed volume builds on this tradition of situating migration and migrant death within broad, systems-level frameworks of analysis, but contends that there is another, perhaps somewhat less tidy, but no less important sociopolitical story to be told here. Through examination of how forensic scientists define, navigate, and enact their work at the frontiers of US policy and economics, this book joins a robust body of literature dedicated to bridging social theory with bioarchaeological applications to modern day problems. This volume is based on deeply and critically reflective analyses, submitted by individual scholars, wherein they navigate and position themselves as social actors embedded within and, perhaps partially constituted by, relations of power, cultural ideologies, and the social structures characterizing this moment in history. Each contribution addresses a different variation on themes of power relations, production of knowledge, and reflexivity in practice. In sum, however, the chapters of this book trace relationships between institutions, entities, and individuals comprising the landscapes of migrant death and repatriation and considers their articulation with sociopolitical dynamics of the neoliberal state.
Archaeology.
Forensic medicine.
Archaeology.
Forensic Science.