Fencing the other: Symbolic constructions of the “immigrant” within

Abstract

Symbolic markers of degeneracy have been applied to immigrants in the US since the early 1800s when the practice of alcohol consumption common to newly-arrived German and Irish settlers was purposefully vilified through popular media. The practice of using stigmatizing symbolic markers to construct differential beliefs and treatment of the globally mobile persists today. This paper analyzes historical and contemporary news stories, political speech, campaign adverts, and satirical cartoons containing both visual and textual symbols which helped to produce the hegemony of a discourse that denigrated those cast as “immigrants.” A number of fear-rousing themes are found in contemporary narratives that mirror historical tropes, such as the use of aquatic metaphors to refer to mass migration. It is theorized that such tropes operate as metonyms which conjure a range of negative associations that have material consequences for those seen as “immigrants.” Such collective symbolic denigration also serves a number of roles for the status quo. It creates an oppositional status that through a dialectical process helps co-constitute the “ideal” US national subject. It contributes to a collective obliviousness about the violent and colonial origins of the US as a nation-state. And finally, it reifies the nation-state as a “natural” entity rather than as a political and social construct.