Pastoral Power, Haitian Migration,
and the Biopolitics of Catholic Charity in the United States

Erica Caple James
Class of 1947 Career Development Professor and Associate Professor of Anthropology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
January 27, 2012
1-3:00 PM
Reception Follows in Brooks Commons

Abstract

In this talk I analyze the role that Catholic Charities have played in the United States in providing sanctuary and care to Haitian refugees, immigrants, and undocumented migrants. Such work occurs as part of an overall religious mission to serve the poor, the sick, and otherwise liminal persons; to advocate for social justice; and to convene public and private partners to address the roots of social distress and poverty. Drawing upon Michel Foucault’s theories of pastoral power and biopolitics, as well as Giorgio Agamben’s elaboration of those theories, I argue that publicly funded religious agencies that provide social services to vulnerable, mobile populations offer a new twist on old debates over whether there can ever truly exist a “wall of separation between church and State.” By analyzing how Catholic Charities has served Haitian refugees in Miami, Florida and Boston, Massachusetts in the 1990s and 2000s, I suggest that faith-based organizations that manage (or contain) liminal populations on behalf of the state have become part of a governmental apparatus that polices such populations to preserve public health and national security. In light of these partnerships, the distinction between sacred and profane, charismatic and bureaucratic, public and private, and compassionate and repressive regulatory regimes dissolves.

For her book,
Democratic Insecurities
Violence, Trauma, and Intervention in Haiti