Systemic Terror, Silent Mourning, and Postcolonial Hope: The Case of Forcibly Separated Migrant Families

Abstract

Abstract The purpose of this paper is three-fold. First, it investigates how the historical and structural injustice has to do with the Central American migration crisis in the U. S. Second, this paper explores immense yet largely unrecognized socio-psychological trauma that forcibly separated migrant families, especially children and their parents must endure. Lastly, this paper develops the concept of postcolonial hope as a practical theological response to the Central American migration crisis and the US biopolitical separation of migrant families. The authors argue that postcolonial hope is conceived as people’s resistance against the state’s anti-immigration biopolitics to reckon with the structural sins of dehumanization and terrorization.