Alien-nation: Immigration, national identity and transnationalism

This article examines recent anti-immigration initiatives, like California' s Proposition 187, in light of the contemporary processes of economic and p olitical reorganization that seem to have undermined the viability of the n ation state (i.e. the globalization of the market economy and the End of th e cold war). It argues that anti-immigration discourse works on a symbolic level to recuperate a coherent sense of national identity in response to th e social and psychic 'alien-nation' caused by the global penetration of cap italism. The study compares two similar yet distinctly different moments of mass immigration - Chinese immigration in the late nineteenth century and 'illegal' immigration in the late twentieth - to determine (1) why these ma ss migrations have elicited legal regulation when others have not, and (2) what might be done. to disrupt the re-emergence of a paradigm of legislated exclusion in the current case. It concludes by examining the conditions of possibility for collective political action within a mass-mediated public sphere. Specifically, I ask how resistance to the historical paradigm of le gislated exclusion might best be mobilized from within a public sphere domi nated by visual media that not only personalize the political, but also exa cerbate the inequalities of access to public life endemic to liberal democr atic political theory.