When race is just a fiction. Keys to understanding the control policies and stigmatization of the migrant body

Abstract

This article has the purpose of showing in which way the state public policies assimilate the subject of migration with the security problems of the country. These prejudices many times will cause the criminalization of the migrant population and naturalize a xenophobic and racist speech, as well as also the social segregation practices. It’s necessary to seek some key concepts that allow to explain this racializing practices and prejudices. Taking de concept of “fictional ethnicity” of Etienne Balibar developed in the book “Race, Nation, Class” (1991) to explain that the nation state by not having a “national identity”, that is not having an “ethnic base”, they fictionally sought an identity origin to produce a cohesion or unity to allow them to defend society from its ills (Foucault, 2001). We start by analyzing migratory politics to discover that that in them it exists a causal logic that connects them with the racial fiction. It will be this fictionality the one that will support migratory policies in the process of selection, control, inclusion and exclusion of the migrant population.