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Family debilitation : migrant child detention and the aesthetic regime of neoliberal authoritarianism

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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 ISSN 2373-566X.

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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/2373566X.2021.1981770

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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:
DateEvent
1 November 2021Published
16 August 2021Accepted
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 (Creative Commons)
Date of first compliant deposit: 5 November 2021
Date of first compliant Open Access: 9 November 2021

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