Abstract

MARTINEZ, Samuel  and  WOODING, Bridget. Anti-Haitianism in the Dominican Republic: A bio-political spin?. Migr. desarro [online]. 2017, vol.15, n.28, pp.95-123. ISSN 1870-7599.

Sentence 168, handed down on the 23 September 2013 by the highest court of justice in the Dominican Republic, the Constitutional Tribunal, has been commonly depicted as the decree that expelled all unauthorized Haitian residents from the Dominican Republic, and further stripped the citizenship of those born in the Dominican Republic of Haitan parents. However, the overall evidence suggests that the Sentence did not seek the territorial exclusion of Haitians and their descendents so much as their inclusion in Dominican political economy as second-class citizens, paralyzing them for a convenient period within a hereditary sub-class. After the Sentence, the old «excesses» (of intimidation and mass explusion) have continued and possibly become worse. But even more chilling is the addition of a recent legal and bureaucratic social exclusion. The aims continue to be clarly anti-Haitian. However, the goal is not to expel the descendents of Haitians nor visibly fence them in, but rather to dissuade them from silently accumultating human capital, economic credentials and the necessary citizenship documents in order to aspire to the comfort and respectability of the middle class. The Sentence thus indicated a change in a feudal system toward a bio-political mode of governance over minority groups, based on the use of new, legal, technologies and the mass storage and recovery of information. Thus, the new anti-Haitian biopolitical mode of exclusion is more capable of using a greater variety and more flexible ways of incorporating Haitian labor into the neoliberal economy.

Keywords : Dominican Republic; human rights; minority rights; migrant rights; bio-politics; Dominican-Haitian; Haitian immigrants.

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