Citation

Kline N. Med. Anthropol. 2016; 36(4): 396-410.

Affiliation

Department of Anthropology , Rollins College , Winter Park , Florida , USA.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2016, Informa - Taylor and Francis Group)

DOI

10.1080/01459740.2016.1259621

PMID

27849361

Abstract

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.

Language: en