De inmigrantes a delincuentes. La producción de los indocumentados como amenaza social en el discurso policial

Abstract

Throughout the 1990s, Argentina has witnessed a rearticulation of images of perilousness. Targeting specific minorities, these images actualize negative feelings towards minority members in the “common citizen”. Approaching discursive practices less as a reflection of “reality” than as an instrument for its construction, we focus on examining the discourse about immigrantion produced by the Federal Police, to analyze displacements of meaning operated by power institutions. We observe how, by propitiating the overlap of the categories “immigrant”, “undocumented” and “delinquent”, police discourse constructs certain sectors of the population as a social threat, as to legitimize the exercise of repressive practices.