Final answer:
Biopolitics is the management of populations by states through categorization and control strategies, as conceptualized by Michel Foucault. Biopower is the state's control over citizens, affecting their lives at multiple levels, and necropolitics, an extension of biopolitics, examines the state's power over life and death decisions.
Step-by-step explanation:
Biopower and Biopolitics
Biopolitics is a concept that was developed by the French philosopher Michel Foucault. It refers to the strategies and mechanisms through which human life processes are managed under regimes of authority over knowledge, power, and the processes of subjectivization. Biopower is the practice of modern states and their control over their citizens' bodies through a myriad of interventions and regulatory controls. For instance, practices associated with birth, death, sexuality, wellness, illness, work, and leisure are all within the realm of biopower. These forms of power are exercised not only through state institutions but also diffuse through society, with citizens themselves participating in its operation.
Biopolitics employs power on a mass scale to categorize and control populations, for example, through the management of health, reproduction, and life expectancy. As seen with immigration enforcement, particularly towards undocumented migrants, controlling a population's movement and access to services can be a way in which the state enforces its power. Biopolitics can manifest in various ways, from policies that affect one's ability to receive healthcare to surveillance tactics that dictate the level of freedom an individual may experience in society.
Extending Foucault's idea, Achille Mbembe introduces necropolitics, which explores the capacity of governments to dictate who may live and who must die, further embedding these powers within the political and policy-making spheres. All these concepts demonstrate a complex relationship between power, life, and the systems that seek to control and define human existence.