TY - JOUR
T1 - Pathogenic Policy
T2 - Immigrant Policing, Fear, and Parallel Medical Systems in the US South
AU - Kline, Nolan
N1 - Funding Information:
The National Science Foundation and the University of South Florida supported part of the fieldwork resulting in this article.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 Taylor & Francis.
PY - 2017/5/19
Y1 - 2017/5/19
N2 - 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.
AB - 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.
KW - biopolitics
KW - health care
KW - immigration enforcement
KW - parallel medical systems
KW - policing
KW - Undocumented immigrants
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85006113102&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/01459740.2016.1259621
DO - 10.1080/01459740.2016.1259621
M3 - Article
C2 - 27849361
AN - SCOPUS:85006113102
SN - 0145-9740
VL - 36
SP - 396
EP - 410
JO - Medical Anthropology
JF - Medical Anthropology
IS - 4
ER -