Operationalization of Necropolitics in the United States' migration policies

In Necropolitics, fear of death as a unifying human experience is used as an instrument of sovereign
obedience and social control – whence the agency’s sheer existence is dependent on the sovereign.
This existential dread yields great political authority to sovereign offering protection in a form of
refuge. Yet, the process of refuge and immigration masks a violent institutional reality that remains
safe behind a humanitarian narrative of rescuing refugees. Through the exploration of the hidden
institutional violence, this paper sought to find the meaning behind policies -as political artifacts-
which constitute legislation. Who created the policies? Why they were created? Who do they benefit?
Applied to the U.S.’s response to the migration of Afghans, this research utilizes interpretive policy
analysis tools, this paper creates a framework for detecting possible bureaucratic entrapments in
migration policies for Afghans, which are then used as technologies of control. This coalesces with the
phenomenological ethnography of Afghan migrants, whose experience of undergoing migration and
resettlement can bolster the realization of how Necropolitics is operationalized in the U.S.’s migration
policies.