Pathogenic Policy: Immigrant Policing, Fear, and Parallel Medical Systems in the US South. Issue 4 (19th May 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Kline, Nolan
• Is Part Of: Medical anthropology. Volume 36:Issue 4(2017)
• Page Start: 396
• Page End: 410
• Publication Date: 2017-05-19
• Subjects: Undocumented immigrants -- immigration enforcement -- health care -- biopolitics -- policing -- parallel medical systems; Medical anthropology -- Periodicals; 362.1
• DOI: 10.1080/01459740.2016.1259621
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0145-9740

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Medical anthropology has a vital role in identifying health-related impacts of policy. In the United States, increasingly harsh immigration policies have formed a multilayered immigrant policing regime comprising state and federal laws and local police practices, the effects of which demand ethnographic attention. In this article, I draw from ethnographic fieldwork in Atlanta, Georgia, to examine the biopolitics of immigrant policing. I underscore how immigrant policing directly impacts undocumented immigrants' health by producing a type of fear based governance that alters immigrants' health behaviors and sites for seeking health services. Ethnographic data further point to how immigrant policing sustains a need for an unequal, parallel medical system, reflecting broader social inequalities impacting vulnerable populations. Moreover, by focusing on immigrant policing, I demonstrate the analytical utility in examining the biopolitics of fear, which can reveal individual experiences and structural influents of health-related vulnerability.