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Constructing Immigrants

A Historical Discourse Analysis of the Representations of Immigrants in US Social Work, 1882-1952

Smith College School for Social Work, USA

Summary: This study analyzes the representations of immigrants found in three US social work periodicals published between 1882 and 1952. Beginning from Foucault’s notion of the ‘history of the present’, an approach to history which examines the past in order to illuminate a present-day problematic, and using textual analysis techniques provided by Jacques Derrida, this work of historical discourse analysis traces the discursive constructions of identity through which immigrants were problematized as particular kinds of subjects in social work discourse.

Findings: The immigrant objects of social work attention - subjects subjugated through the discourse of problematization - were discursive inventions. But the differential valuations which constructed individual immigrants or whole ‘races’ of immigrants as ‘desirable’ or ‘undesirable’ were consequential markers invoking vastly unequal material consequences for those so categorized. Social workers, as significant producers of discourses of immigrants, had and do have a much greater range of influence and responsibility than that with which we were and still are wont to credit ourselves.

Application: In making visible the discursive practices of the past, this paper seeks to clarify the task of present-day social workers: to uncover the margins and the limits of the discourses that construct our troubled times.

Key Words: discourse analysis • immigrants • social work history

Journal of Social Work, Vol. 6, No. 2, 169-203 (2006)
DOI: 10.1177/1468017306066673


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