As scholars have by now long contended, global neoliberalism and the
violence associated with state restructuring provide key frameworks for
understanding flows of people across national boundaries and,
eventually, into the treacherous terrains of the United States
borderlands. The proposed volume builds on this tradition of situating
migration and migrant death within broad, systems-level frameworks of
analysis, but contends that there is another, perhaps somewhat less
tidy, but no less important sociopolitical story to be told here.
Through examination of how forensic scientists define, navigate, and
enact their work at the frontiers of US policy and economics, this book
joins a robust body of literature dedicated to bridging social theory
with bioarchaeological applications to modern day problems.
This volume is based on deeply and critically reflective analyses,
submitted by individual scholars, wherein they navigate and position
themselves as social actors embedded within and, perhaps partially
constituted by, relations of power, cultural ideologies, and the social
structures characterizing this moment in history.
Each contribution addresses a different variation on themes of power
relations, production of knowledge, and reflexivity in practice. In sum,
however, the chapters of this book trace relationships between
institutions, entities, and individuals comprising the landscapes of
migrant death and repatriation and considers their articulation with
sociopolitical dynamics of the neoliberal state.
