The Immigration as a Social Ordeal and the Legal Margins of Disagreement Public Policies, Social Practices and the Construction of the Person

Abstract

The regulation of administrative principles and proceedings that tacitly made possible the immigration process enables not only certain personal itineraries but also the emergence of a social imaginary about the otherness. Based on the discursive analysis of the information sheets published online by the Department of Employment and Social Security in Spain, the main aim of this article is to highlight how the social construction of the emigrant/immigrant and his migratory project, have to face representations and challenges, which are simultaneously established and endorsed by the formulation of regulations itself, although they might not be completely explicit. I conceive regulations as actions that trigger other actions. As such, in this article I analyze the consequences that these regulations have upon the social practice of the immigrants. In sum, this article seeks to envisage the elements —terminology, analytic principles, images, practices— that constitute the immigrant as a social agent, subordinated to micro-process and relations of which he cannot account for, even if they shape its own capacity for action. In sum, and following Foucault’s distinction between the principle of difference and the principle of indifference, I argue that the fi rst one governs (regulates) general clauses whereas the second articulates specifi c ones.