The Anatomy of Post-Communist Regimes: A Conceptual Framework

century U.S. expansionism (Chapter 3). The concepts of social death and hauntings, therefore, provide compelling ways to center violence in the study of contemporary migration. That Patterson’s and (to some extent) Gordon’s theories were derived from the case study of Black enslavement in the United States is also noteworthy. In effect, Migration and Mortality offers readers different ways to reflect on the relationship between past and present forms of racial capitalism. Paradoxically, all this talk of death can actually be life-affirming. Deaths can ‘‘light a spark’’ (p. 284) and ‘‘electrify the living’’ (p. 11)—just as George Floyd’s murder did. Grieving the deaths that society does not consider grievable can be a political act. Migration and Mortality insists that we grieve.