Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair
Symbolic Violence
The mistreatment of migrants at the border has been at the top of the headlines, thanks in no small part to the painful issue of family separation, a key part of Trump’s so-called “zero tolerance” strategy on immigration. Splitting children away from their parents has epitomized the cruelty with which the Trump administration is dealing with migrants. Even before becoming president, it was clear that Trump was going to make the castigation and scapegoating of immigrants a centerpiece of his regime. After all, what can be expected of a politician who launched his presidential campaign by denigrating Mexican immigrants as “rapists” and “drug dealers”. Family separation and the detainment and caging of children at the border adds an element of symbolic violence to the increasingly harsh treatment immigrants are dealt with.It is this symbolic violence, which I argue, most distinguishes the Trump administration treatment of migrants from previous administrations. To be clear, it is not that previous administrations treatment of migrants was necessarily humane. It wasn’t. but rather that Trump administration has turned the suffering and humiliating of migrants into spectacle–reminiscent of former sheriff, and convicted felon, Joe Arpaio’s dessert tents and accompanying pink prison uniforms.
That Trump has ratcheted up the cruelty and disdain with which immigrants are dealt with cannot be denied. However,…