"Letting die" by design: Asylum seekers' lived experience of postcolonial necropolitics. (March 2023)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Wilson, Brenda K.; Burnstan, Alexis; Calderon, Cristina; and, ; Csordas, Thomas J.
• Is Part Of: Social science & medicine. Volume 320(2023)
• Publication Date: 2023-03
• Subjects: Asylum seekers -- Necropolitics -- Migration -- Structural violence -- US-Mexico border -- Lived experience -- Ethnography; Social medicine -- Periodicals; Medical anthropology -- Periodicals; Public health -- Periodicals; Psychology -- Periodicals; Medicine -- Periodicals; Medicine -- Periodicals; Médecine sociale -- Périodiques; Anthropologie médicale -- Périodiques; Santé publique -- Périodiques; Psychologie -- Périodiques; Médecine -- Périodiques; Electronic journals; 362.105
• DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2023.115714
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0277-9536

Abstract

Abstract: Although the United States has been a nation of immigrants since its founding, the massive number of asylum seekers arriving at the US-Mexico Border is a relatively new phenomenon that requires attention and study. This paper describes the lived experience of three asylum seekers, demonstrating how physical and mental health are structured by US policies and politics. The in-depth accounts are informed by participant observation and policy analysis of humanitarian, non-governmental organizations advocating for asylum seekers. We focus on health and geographical trajectories using the triple trauma paradigm that includes trauma in the country of origin, trauma incurred during transit/flight, and the trauma of arrival and relocation/resettlement in the host country. We suggest that a form of necropower, understood as processes exacerbating the potentiality for death, is embedded in the structure of the US asylum apparatus. Highlights: Asylum seekers' lived experience reveals stressors undermining physical/mental health Exacerbation of the potentiality for death is embedded in the US asylum seeking system Racialized targeting of immigrant bodies by the US asylum apparatus is "by design" Decisions by specific actors and anonymous cultural patterns promote a politics of death