Refusing the Stranger: Migration, Discourse, and Exclusion in Neoliberal Subjectivity

In this article we will give an account of both some old and new forms of discrimination against migrants and refugees that can be observed today. Our aim is to explore from where stems the refusal of foreigners, in both the countries of transit and destination along current migratory routes; as well as to understand the rejection of otherness encountered in diverse forms in the societies of origin. With a view to constructing a topology of the use of the “foreigner” in the maintenance and legitimisation of inequalities in cultures where neoliberalism has become a central ideology, we will explore the discursive dynamics that produce exclusion through the rejection of the radically other and the radicalisation of “small differences”. To that end, we will focus on the news coverage of migratory waves, in order to demonstrate how neoliberalism creates a homogenisation of the biopolitical processes at work in the management of populations. We will consider how this ideology aims to promote a management of the foreign subject, assigning them an abject social, political and subjective place, in which they suffer the effects of discursive distress (Rosa, 2016).