Nationalization of the society, creation of the immigrant

Abstract

What is an immigrant? To answer this, formal definitions are not enough. We need to understand when, in which way, and through what mechanisms, did the figure of the immigrant appear. We want to show precisely how did the nationalization of society produce and still produces some sort of national identity that works as subjectivation and creates the immigrant. The immigrant would be a specific product of the nation and State formation process, and it would be inseparable of the problem of nationality as well as the problem of nationalism, racism and citizenship. As a last resort, the question of the immigrant shows the costs of the nation-State configuration shows the limits of our ways to organize the society.