Rhetoric, Governmentality, and the Construction of "Illegal" Immigrants in the Post-social State

Abstract

Jonathan Inda argues that disillusionment with the welfare state by a variety of political forces has led to the development of the post-social state, one that seeks to govern by means of "managing the choices of the citizen. " For Inda, the proliferating discourses on immigration construct "illegal immigrants" as people unable to fulfill the responsibilities of citizenship and as threats to the social body. Grounded in the work of Foucault and other governmentality scholars, this paper examines the current wave of anti-immigrant discourses, locating them within the post-social state as instruments of governmentality. This paper also explores previous examples of anti-immigrant discourses, in particular those surrounding California's Save Our State initiative, to examine the ways in which the rhetorical shifts of anti-immigration advocates reflect changes in the post-911 exercise of governmentality. An analysis of these discourses demonstrates that the rhetoric used by anti-immigrant advocates portrays illegal immigrants as unethical subjects representing a physical danger to the social body, upholding gendered, racialized, and criminalized representations of immigrants.