Gobernar a través del miedo: narrativas antiinmigrantes y deshumanización en la administración Trump

Abstract

Anti-immigrant narratives are central to the production and circulation of hate speech in contemporary political life. Connected to nationalist imaginaries that figure migrants as threats in a context of democratic crisis, social polarization and the spread of disinformation in digital environments. This article analyzes the ways in which the Trump administration used these narratives to rationalize the exclusion and de-subjectification of migrants. This research adopted a qualitative and interpretive approach and the corpus was selected through purposive sampling, comprising official speeches, slogans and immigration policies in both presidential terms. The analysis was based on three categories: temporal precarity, juridical exceptionality and representational dehumanization. The results demonstrate that the U.S. immigration system works in a coordinated manner, which results in long-lasting uncertainty, uneven access to rights, and images that dehumanize migrants and justify their exclusion. Based on these findings, the article suggests ethical and political criteria for transforming dominant narratives and recognizing the political agency of migrants.