Introduction

Abstract

In the last decade, over 6,000 migrants have perished along the US-Mexico border. Historically, undocumented border crossers have entered the USA by traveling into California; however, changes in border policy in the early 2000s funneled migrants into the more treacherous landscapes of Arizona and, more recently, Texas. The situation in Texas, however, only recently garnered significant public attention. Therefore, an institutionalized notion of migrant death as a crisis is still relatively new in the state and is therefore largely under-funded and under-addressed. This chapter introduces the book, Sociopolitics of Migrant Death and Repatriation: Perspectives from Forensic Science, which uses the interconnected lenses of history, power, and scientific practice as a vantage point from which to examine the migrant identification and repatriation process. At the heart of this book is the recognition that forensic science applied to the US border region crisis operates within a broader political economic context. 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.