Immigration Challenges the Meritocratic Ideology: Between Criminalization and Justice

Abstract

My own life story is bound up with African class struggles against social imagination, reproduction of whiteness and colonial ideologies of power. Based upon his experience, the paper will argue that criminalization is not just restricted to the border context but occurs even after migrants cross the border. Therefore, this article will pay close attention to the disruptive articulation between the rule of law and the meritocracy system’s rhetoric of merit, challenging both the assumption that race is an equal starting point for all runners and the ideal of socioeconomic equality between races. As Manning Marabel (2000) stresses, when we talk about race, we do not mean a biological or genetic category, but rather, a way of interpreting differences between people which creates or reinforces inequalities among them. Racism means that we are not in a meritocratic race since some runners are disadvantaged.