The Library
Family debilitation : migrant child detention and the aesthetic regime of neoliberal authoritarianism
Tools
Tools
Tools
Blencowe, Claire (2021) Family debilitation : migrant child detention and the aesthetic regime of neoliberal authoritarianism. GeoHumanities, 7 (2). 415-440 . doi:10.1080/2373566X.2021.1981770
|
PDF
WRAP-family-debilitation-migrant-child-detention-aesthetic-regime-neoliberal-authoritarianism-Blencowe-2021.pdf - Published Version - Requires a PDF viewer. Available under License Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. Download (1917Kb) | Preview |
Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/2373566X.2021.1981770
Abstract
This paper proposes the term “family debilitation” to point to the ways that institutionalized child abuse operates to perversely generate biopolitical authority, a strategy of negative biopolitics that is integral to the aesthetic regimes of settler colonialism and neoliberal authoritarianism. The paper attends to two scenes of child detention in the US: Scene 1 US/Mexico Border 2017 concerns migrant children caught up in the bordering regimes of Donald Trump’s America; Scene 2 Pennsylvania 1879 concerns indigenous children caught up in the disciplinary regimes of “civilizing” education. As we attend to the connections between these scenes an argument emerges that situates racialized child detention and abuse within the aesthetic technologies biopolitical sovereignty. The “problem” to which these practices serve as a kind of technical answer is not any kind of problem with migrant and indigenous families themselves but rather is a problem of government—specifically the legitimacy deficit that exists where biopolitical states openly participate in dispossession and the destruction of life.
| Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HQ The family. Marriage. Woman H Social Sciences > HV Social pathology. Social and public welfare J Political Science > JA Political science (General) J Political Science > JC Political theory J Political Science > JV Colonies and colonization. Emigration and immigration. International migration |
||||||
| Divisions: | Faculty of Social Sciences > Sociology | ||||||
| Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Unaccompanied immigrant children , Unaccompanied immigrant children -- Abuse of, Unaccompanied immigrant children -- Government policy, Illegal alien children -- Government policy , Alien detention centers , Unaccompanied refugee children , Families, Biopolitics, Neoliberalism , Authoritarianism | ||||||
| Journal or Publication Title: | GeoHumanities | ||||||
| Publisher: | Taylor & Francis | ||||||
| ISSN: | 2373-566X | ||||||
| Official Date: | 1 November 2021 | ||||||
| Dates: |
|
||||||
| Volume: | 7 | ||||||
| Number: | 2 | ||||||
| Page Range: | 415-440 | ||||||
| DOI: | 10.1080/2373566X.2021.1981770 | ||||||
| Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||
| Publication Status: | Published | ||||||
| Access rights to Published version: | Open Access |
Request changes or add full text files to a record
Repository staff actions (login required)
 |
View Item |
Downloads
Downloads per month over past year
