Beings from another world: On the symbolic function of the immigrant

Abstract

The so-called immigrants are guarantors of the demographic renewal of urban societies, ensuring that the most inclement needs of their labour market will be covered. But they are also, as part of a system of representation, able to make social disorder thinkable. Their socioeconomic function both requires and is required by their symbolic function, putting them between quotes to make sense of them. Foreign workers are enticed to meet hegemonic material requirements in the societies that receive them. But such requirements, based on the massive derogation of cheap labour force, cannot be met without a previous or parallel set of rhetoric operations that make each foreign worker an immigrant, a non-objective figure that leads to (and depends on) a process of political, media and popular assemblage, that turns him/her into a conceptual character, into a being from another world.