Shifting the Logic: Losing Children’s Bodies

ABSTRACT

This article examines the Trump administration’s family separation immigration policy within the context of the logic of 21st-century capitalism. It suggests that the events related to the policy are not anomalous, but profoundly indicative of a system of governance that is removing itself with increasing speed from the concerns of actual living material bodies. In this sense, the situation at the U.S.-Mexico border is less about the maltreatment of this group of parents and children than it is an indication of a profound shift in the logic of governance that is global in scope and affects all living things both human and more than human across the planet. The article argues that the current emerging system of global capitalist rule is premised on a system that uses abstract algorithms to turn the vital living concerns of people into media events disconnected from any material set of actual problems or struggles. Finally, a proposal is made for a response from the field of Human Service Practice.

KEYWORDS:

• Immigration
• simulacra
• post-marxism
• capitalism

Notes

¹ The film Rabbit Proof Fence depicts a “true” account of these practices.

² The Canadian government has offered apologies and set up truth and reconciliation committees to begin to redress the harm done. Regrettably, there has been no similar response in the United States.

³ It should be noted that this use of the kindergarten is being revived for use in Denmark where “starting at the age of 1, ‘ghetto children’ must be separated from their families for at least 25 hours a week, not including nap time, for mandatory instruction in ‘Danish values,’ including the traditions of Christmas and Easter, and the Danish language.” Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/01/world/europe/denmark-immigrant-ghettos.html.

⁴ Miller (2012) notes an earlier instance of child abandonment in the 13^th century in Europe due to social instability and poverty. This was also a period of a shift in production. In this case the move into a feudal economy through the appropriation of land farmed in common, an early precursor to the development of capitalism.