Using examples from the United States-Mexico border, Central America, and South America, this book argues that forced migration is not a spontaneous phenomenon, but rather a product of necropolitical strategies.

Using examples from the United States—Mexico border, Central America, and South America, this book argues that forced migration is not a spontaneous phenomenon, but rather a product of necropolitical strategies designed to depopulate resource rich countries or regions. Estevez merges necropolitical analysis with postcolonial migration and offers a new framework to study the set of policies, laws, institutions, and political discourses producing a profit in a legal context in which habitat devastation is legal, but mobility is a crime. Violence, deprivation of food or water, environmental contamination, and rights exclusion are some of the tactics used in extractivist capitalism. Private and state actors alike, use necropower, both its first and third world versions, to make people, living and dead, a commodity.

Chapter 1. Forced Migration as a Process of Necropolitical Production and Management

Chapter 2. Producing Forced Migration

Chapter 3. From the Asylum Seeker to the Forced Migrant

Chapter 4. Managing Forced Migration

Conclusion: A Theorization of Forced Migration in the Necropolitical Era (Plus COVID-19)