TY - JOUR
T1 - Migrant flows and necro-sovereignty
T2 - the itineraries of bodies, samples, and data across the US-Mexico borderlands
AU - García-Deister, Vivette
AU - Smith, Lindsay A.
N1 - Funding Information:
Acknowledgements This research was supported by a Wenner Gren Foundation Collaborative Research Grant. We extend our thanks to Mexico City’s INCIFO and Tribunal Superior de Justicia, and to the forensic scientists working on both sides of the border who discussed their work with us for the purpose of this research. We are also grateful for the insightful recommendations offered by anonymous referees.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019, Springer Nature Limited.
Copyright:
Copyright 2020 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2020/9/1
Y1 - 2020/9/1
N2 - Through an ethnographic examination of the tension between the practice and politics of mobility, this article examines the movement of bodies as scientific objects and sociopolitical signposts for both sovereignty and identity. In particular, we explore the following paradox: living migrants are seen as dangerous bodies and political threats while dead bodies, specifically, the objects and data generated from their remains make multiple, socially valued migrations across the political space of the border. We argue that scientific objects flow because these objects, not the people, become the currency of necro-sovereignty, a nationalistic currency premised on death and exercised via appeals to human identification as a form of family reunification and the return of bodies-out-of-place to their ‘correct’ locations. Exploration of this paradox also shows that although individuation is the key goal of forensic science, collective identities, including race, class, gender, and nationality, become obligatory passage points in the path toward individuation.
AB - Through an ethnographic examination of the tension between the practice and politics of mobility, this article examines the movement of bodies as scientific objects and sociopolitical signposts for both sovereignty and identity. In particular, we explore the following paradox: living migrants are seen as dangerous bodies and political threats while dead bodies, specifically, the objects and data generated from their remains make multiple, socially valued migrations across the political space of the border. We argue that scientific objects flow because these objects, not the people, become the currency of necro-sovereignty, a nationalistic currency premised on death and exercised via appeals to human identification as a form of family reunification and the return of bodies-out-of-place to their ‘correct’ locations. Exploration of this paradox also shows that although individuation is the key goal of forensic science, collective identities, including race, class, gender, and nationality, become obligatory passage points in the path toward individuation.
KW - Bilateral cooperation
KW - Forensic science
KW - Justice
KW - Migration
KW - Nation
KW - Sovereignty
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U2 - 10.1057/s41292-019-00166-4
DO - 10.1057/s41292-019-00166-4
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85071437304
SN - 1745-8552
VL - 15
SP - 420
EP - 437
JO - BioSocieties
JF - BioSocieties
IS - 3
ER -