Abstract

OEHMICHEN, Cristina. The imaginaries of alterity and the construction of the scapegoat: Trump and the anti-immigrant racism. Rev. pueblos front. digit. [online]. 2018, vol.13, e344. ISSN 1870-4115.  https://doi.org/10.22201/cimsur.18704115e.2018.v13.344.

Nationalist enthusiasm in the Donald Trump's presidential campaign included promises to deport immigrants, build a wall on the southern border of the United States, return jobs that industries had taken to Mexico, renegotiate the Trilateral Free Trade Agreement and expel Muslims. He appealed to the feeling of nostalgia for a mythical era in which the country had been «great». He called the electorate to recover that greatness, which supposedly was lost because others took over the country: immigrants, Afro-descendants and other minorities. This article proposes to analyze the construction of immigrants as a scapegoat, an alterity that is blamed for the precariousness and unemployment suffered by large sectors of the population. The discourse that is based on underlying imaginaries and that appeals to the feeling of loss to redirect the anger provoked by neoliberal policies and divert it towards a sacrificial victim: the migrants. Press releases, reports, interviews, online publications, as well as systematic consultation on social networks. Likewise, it is based on interviews with members of the Mexican community settled in the United States, made between November 2016 and June 2017.

Keywords : xenophobia; racism; borders; nationalism; post-truth.

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