The Fear of Immigrants

The presence and growing visibility of racial minority immigrants in the United States and across the globe has triggered a sense of collective anxiety, where dissociative defenses maintain emotional distance and identification with groups perceived to be threatening. Fringe movements and mainstream political parties have framed immigrants and refugees as the major cause of unemployment, crime, and a threat to their cultural and social fabric. Recent policies in the United States, such as those resulting in heightened policing of Black and Brown people and deportation of undocumented immigrants and separation of children from parents, have made explicit the connection between racism and xenophobia. These macrolevel policies and the broader xenophobic and racist sociopolitical climate in which they are implemented have important implications for intrapsychic life and interpersonal relationships. This paper explores psychoanalytic perspectives on the roots of xenophobia, racialized defenses, and their implications for the experiences of racial minority immigrants in the United States. The paper further addresses how the fear of immigrants reflects anxiety in multiple dimensions, involving not only fears of the receiving context or the host country, but also the xenophobia that immigrants carry with them from their countries of origin. The implications of xenophobia and racism are explored in the context of the therapeutic relationship, where the client and the therapist engage in difficult and emotionally charged ways with respect to the current sociopolitical climate. Clinical examples are provided to illustrate transference and countertransference dynamics, and related dilemmas centered on xenophobia and racism that arise in psychoanalytic psychotherapy.