O IMIGRANTE COMO PARADOXO: ENTRE A EXPLORAÇÃO ECONÔMICA E O INIMIGO CONSTRUÍDO

Abstract

This article analyzes human mobility as an intrinsic consequence of the capitalist mode of production, focusing on the paradoxical condition of the immigrant in the contemporary context. Although constituting an indispensable force for the global economic dynamics, the immigrant is simultaneously a target of stigmatization, exclusion, and restrictive policies, a phenomenon that reflects the structural contradictions of capitalist societies. From an interdisciplinary approach that integrates geographic, social, political, and psychosocial perspectives, the study understands the human being as an active agent in the transformation of space, mediated by material determinations and subjective motivations. The article dialogues with Giorgio Agamben’s concept of “bare life” and Achille Mbembe’s concept of “necropolitics” to deepen the understanding of the economic instrumentalization and political dehumanization of the immigrant. It highlights how mobility is regulated not only as a mechanism of exploitation but also as a government technology that legitimizes exclusion and vulnerability, configuring contemporary borders as devices of selective control and social death. The analysis includes the discursive construction of the immigrant as a social, economic, and cultural threat, emphasizing the psychopolitics of guilt as a tool to maintain power hierarchies and fragment solidarity. Through qualitative bibliographic research, the article systematizes classical and contemporary concepts to demonstrate that spatial transformations result from historical, social, and psychic mediations. Thus, it seeks to reveal the complex dialectic between economic dependence and political rejection of the immigrant, showing how this paradox updates ancient mechanisms of domination and inequality in the global space.