TY - JOUR
T1 - Life, Death, and Dialysis
T2 - Medical Repatriation and Liminal Life among Undocumented Kidney Failure Patients in the United States
AU - Kline, Nolan
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
©2018 by the American Anthropological Association
PY - 2018/11
Y1 - 2018/11
N2 - Anthropological research on policy and health underscores how policy reflects cultural ideologies and results in marginalizing specific populations. Ethnographic inquiry can further reveal the broader, unexpected effects of policy change. In this article, I describe how state legislators in Georgia revised an existing entitlement program to specifically exclude undocumented immigrants with kidney failure from receiving life-sustaining care. This health policy change converged with broader efforts to financialize the US health system and resulted in undocumented immigrant patients dying; being medically repatriated to their countries of birth; placed in private, for-profit dialysis centers; or obtaining care through a burdensome process involving a public hospital's emergency room. Drawing from Mbembe's concept of necropolitics, I show how policy changes left undocumented kidney failure patients in a state between life and death, revealing the hidden outcomes of policies targeting immigrants. As anti-immigrant policies continue to be proposed in the United States, findings from this article provide a cautionary tale about the sweeping consequences of legislation that targets immigrants.
AB - Anthropological research on policy and health underscores how policy reflects cultural ideologies and results in marginalizing specific populations. Ethnographic inquiry can further reveal the broader, unexpected effects of policy change. In this article, I describe how state legislators in Georgia revised an existing entitlement program to specifically exclude undocumented immigrants with kidney failure from receiving life-sustaining care. This health policy change converged with broader efforts to financialize the US health system and resulted in undocumented immigrant patients dying; being medically repatriated to their countries of birth; placed in private, for-profit dialysis centers; or obtaining care through a burdensome process involving a public hospital's emergency room. Drawing from Mbembe's concept of necropolitics, I show how policy changes left undocumented kidney failure patients in a state between life and death, revealing the hidden outcomes of policies targeting immigrants. As anti-immigrant policies continue to be proposed in the United States, findings from this article provide a cautionary tale about the sweeping consequences of legislation that targets immigrants.
KW - end-stage renal disease
KW - financialization
KW - health policy
KW - necropolitics
KW - undocumented immigrants
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85058839102&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1111/plar.12269
DO - 10.1111/plar.12269
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85058839102
SN - 1081-6976
VL - 41
SP - 216
EP - 230
JO - Political and Legal Anthropology Review
JF - Political and Legal Anthropology Review
IS - 2
ER -