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Date of Award

Spring 2020

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Historical & Political Studies; College of Arts & Sciences

First Advisor

Jennifer Riggan

Abstract

In this paper, I focus on how racialized rhetoric is present in contemporary immigration policy as a means to define the idea of an exclusive American identity. My central claim is that wording and discursive measures in asylum and immigration policy builds a more explicit picture of a racialized American identity. With those constructed identities of who is American and who is other, I explore how some lives are framed to have more worth than others in rhetoric. In the context of asylum seeking criteria being restricted under the Trump administration, “[if] certain lives do not qualify as lives or are, from the start, not conceivable as lives within certain epistemological frames, then these lives are never lived or lost in the full sense” (Butler: 1). I utilize various anthropological works that explore identity building through the construction of enmity to analyze patterns of speech by President Trump and Jeff Sessions as well as tweets, policy documents, and official statements on the white house website. I also track the shifts in policy through the Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations to argue that Trump’s immigration policy as well as the way he talks about immigrants exacerbates an already existing problem.

Comments

International Studies

Additional Files

Frameworks of Identity Building.pdf (497 kB)

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Frameworks of American Identity Building: Necropolitics and the Construction of an Enemy, Immigrant Other

In this paper, I focus on how racialized rhetoric is present in contemporary immigration policy as a means to define the idea of an exclusive American identity. My central claim is that wording and discursive measures in asylum and immigration policy builds a more explicit picture of a racialized American identity. With those constructed identities of who is American and who is other, I explore how some lives are framed to have more worth than others in rhetoric. In the context of asylum seeking criteria being restricted under the Trump administration, “[if] certain lives do not qualify as lives or are, from the start, not conceivable as lives within certain epistemological frames, then these lives are never lived or lost in the full sense” (Butler: 1). I utilize various anthropological works that explore identity building through the construction of enmity to analyze patterns of speech by President Trump and Jeff Sessions as well as tweets, policy documents, and official statements on the white house website. I also track the shifts in policy through the Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations to argue that Trump’s immigration policy as well as the way he talks about immigrants exacerbates an already existing problem.