Necropolitical context in supporting refugees and migrants by faith-based organizativos and social services in the United States and Mexico

Abstract

Returning to the concepts of governmentality and its biopolitical techniques, as well as that of pastoral power exposed by Foucault, this article argues that faith-based organizations and social services in the United States and Mexico are articulated around discourses, prac- tices and power of the public policies to help refugees and migrants in bio and necropolitical contexts. The article presents an unpublished qualitative investigation of a sample of these organizations in both countries; these organizations are part of a biopolitics of organizing the life of a population such as refugees and migrants, in the midst of a necropolitical context of exclusion and marginalization by governments and the violence that expels them from their places of origin. These organizations provide care from a social pastoral logic to mitigate the state of exception in which these populations find themselves.