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.