TY - JOUR
T1 - Trump’s Essentialist Border Rhetoric
T2 - Racial Identities and Dangerous Liminalities
AU - Heuman, Amy N.
AU - González, Alberto
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2018, © 2018 World Communication Association.
PY - 2018/7/4
Y1 - 2018/7/4
N2 - Our article focuses on the emergence of a racialized border rhetoric that functions to cast Mexican (im)migrants, refugees, US DREAMers, and undocumented persons in the US—specifically those coming from south of the US border—as social burdens who threaten the sovereignty of the nation-state. We describe the new essentialism in Donald J. Trump’s tweets and speeches that is a hybrid of overt and covert racism working to cast brown bodies as dangerous, deviant, pollutants as a means of controlling their movements and re-centering Whiteness. At the same time, we identify a dangerous liminality that refugees, (im)migrants, and potentially DREAMers find themselves navigating as a result. Attention is also given to counter-narratives that have been advanced to resist this essentializing rhetoric.
AB - Our article focuses on the emergence of a racialized border rhetoric that functions to cast Mexican (im)migrants, refugees, US DREAMers, and undocumented persons in the US—specifically those coming from south of the US border—as social burdens who threaten the sovereignty of the nation-state. We describe the new essentialism in Donald J. Trump’s tweets and speeches that is a hybrid of overt and covert racism working to cast brown bodies as dangerous, deviant, pollutants as a means of controlling their movements and re-centering Whiteness. At the same time, we identify a dangerous liminality that refugees, (im)migrants, and potentially DREAMers find themselves navigating as a result. Attention is also given to counter-narratives that have been advanced to resist this essentializing rhetoric.
KW - Border rhetoric
KW - Trump
KW - U.S.-Mexico border
KW - immigrants
KW - race
KW - vernacular discourse
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85047193487&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/17475759.2018.1473280
DO - 10.1080/17475759.2018.1473280
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85047193487
VL - 47
SP - 326
EP - 342
JO - Journal of Intercultural Communication Research
JF - Journal of Intercultural Communication Research
SN - 1747-5759
IS - 4
ER -