Necropolitics and Neoliberalism: The Disposability of Racialized and Gendered Bodies on the U.S.-Mexico Border

• In Event: Deadly Fixations, Unsettling Dwellings, and Subversive Mobilities at and across Colonial Borders

Abstract

Since 2001, draconian immigration laws and heightened security have contributed to increased deaths of migrants on the US/Mexico border. The border has come to represent a paradoxical site of contention, where immigrant bodies are rendered visible/invisible and mobile/immobile by neoliberal U.S. and Mexican states. This paper centers on the necropolitics of globalization, where the neoliberal state relies on the disposability of migrant bodies and the devaluing of migrant lives. Using a transnational feminist lens, the paper analyzes cultural texts that address the urgency of state-imposed crimes and the systematic disregard of migrant bodies on the U.S./Mexico border.

Presenter

• Viviana Beatriz MacManus, University of Maryland, Baltimore County