Migration and Mortality: Social Death, Dispossession, and Survival in the Americas

Description

Death threatens migrants physically during perilous border crossings between Central and North America, but many also experience legal, social, and economic mortality. Rooted in histories of colonialism and conquest, exclusionary policies and practices deliberately take aim at racialized, dispossessed people in transit. Once in the new land, migrants endure a web of systems across every facet of their world—work, home, healthcare, culture, justice—that strips them of their personhood, denies them resources, and creates additional obstacles that deprive them of their ability to live fully. As laws and policies create ripe conditions for the further extraction of money, resources, and labor power from the dispossessed, the contributors to this vibrant anthology, Migration and Mortality, examine restrictive immigration policies and the broader capitalist systems of exploitation and inequality while highlighting the power of migrants’ collective resistance and resilience.  The case studies in this timely collection explore border deaths, detention economies, asylum seeking, as well as the public health and mental health of migrants. Ultimately, these examples of oppression and survival contribute to understanding broader movements for life and justice in the Americas. Contents Preface: Why Study Death? Introduction: Murder It Remains / Miranda Cady Hallett and Jamie Longazel I. Haunted Humanitarianism 1. Death by Enclosure: Human Rights Organizations, Migrant Fatalities, and the Delimitation of the Global Commons / Joseph Nevins 2. Living and Dying in El Norte: The Framing of Maya Migration / Alicia Ivonne Estrada 3. Proprietors of Death: An Ethnography of the 2019 San Antonio Border Security Expo / Marianne Madoré and Nicholas Rodrigo II. Death and Dispossession 4. Anonymous Brown Bodies: The Productive Power of the Deadly U.S.-Mexico Border / Nicholas De Genova 5. Detention Economies: Commodifying Migrant Social Death / Deirdre Conlon and Nancy Hiemstra 6. Heat-Related Illness and Death among Migrant Farmworkers: Dispatches from the Girasoles Study / Nathan J. Mutic and Linda A. McCauley III. Epidemiologies of Living with Death 7. Morbidity and Mortality in Immigrant Narratives: A Public Health Perspective on State Violence, Social Exclusion, and Experiences of Harm among Deportable Immigrants / Daniel L. Stageman and Shirley P. Leyro 8. Death and Disabilities in Divergent Deportation Contexts: Revisiting the Hispanic Epidemiological Paradox / Juan M. Pedroza and Pil H. Chung 9. The Dead and Living Dead: Legal Violence and Undocumented Kidney Failure Patients in Atlanta, Georgia / Nolan Kline IV. Outsourced Suffering and Survival in the Americas 10. Expanding Exclusion: Migration, Asylum, and Transnational Death in Mexico and the United States / Jared P. Van Ramshorst 11. Better in Jail There than Dead Here: Deportation and (Social) Death in Honduras / Amelia Frank-Vitale 12. Miskitu Labor and Immigrant Struggles: U.S. Anti–Central American Policies of Social Death / Karina Alma 13. A Politics of Survival / Abby C. Wheatley Epilogue: Death in Detention / Anna M. Babel, with Miranda Cady Hallett and Jamie Longazel Contributors Index