The Fear of Immigrants

The Fear of Immigrants 

Pratyusha Tummala-Narra


  • Fringe (unconventional) movements and mainstream political parties have framed immigrants and refugees as the major cause of unemployment, crime, and a threat to their culture and social fabric


  • Xenophobia - the fear and hatred of strangers or foreigners or of anything that is strange or foreign that is connected to nationalism and ethnocentrism, or the belief that a certain nation, state, or community is superior to other

  • Xenophobia carries “discriminatory potential” that is linked with economic, social, and political instability and the perception of loss of resources

  • Xenophobia is experienced in intrapsychic life and in interpersonal encounters in ways that have become increasingly problematic in many parts of the world 


Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy in the Present Sociopolitical Climate


  • Similar political views made the therapeutic relationship stronger

  • Sociopolitical issues (race, gender, class, culture) are an unavoidable part of the therapeutic process 

  • Therapist need to examine and reexamine the influence of their own interpersonal and social, cultural, and political histories on their approach to practice 


  • Working with xenophobia and racism requires a willingness to witness and engage with sociocultural trauma and defensive reactions in intrapsychic and interpersonal conflicts 


Xenophobia and Race


  • Xenophobia and racism have been known to be “mutually supporting forms of oppression”

  • Xenophobia and racism work together to create and sustain conditions that lead to ongoing traumatic stress 

  • “Trump effect” - racial minority immigrant children and children of immigrants have been called terrorists at school, told by classmates and teachers their parents will be deported, and that they would be put into camps

  • In the context of psychoanalytic psychotherapy, these crises have important implications for how clients and therapists experience the sociopolitical climate and engage with each other 







Psychoanalytic Perspective on Xenophobia and Racism 


  • Depositing - parents express their feelings towards something or someone and they expect their child to carry similar attitudes or beliefs to stay connected to the parent

  • Unmenalized Xenophobia - impinges on one’s ability to develop a sense of cooperation with others and to explore and form friendships and intimate relationships that pose new perspectives countering or challenging rigid notions of others 

  • Some white people feel envy that they do not feel like they belong to a certain ethnicity or they feel privileged not to have to think about it and just say “I’m white”

  • In psychoanalytic therapy, we must consider the explication of unconscious and implicit hate, envy, and rage that may affect inner life, and the permission one feels to oppress other 


Experiences of Racial Minority Immigrants


  • In a study, immigrant youth were found to be less optimistic about their future well-being and health when compared with U.S  born White youth

  • Communities play a critical role in the psychic organization of racial minority immigrants - friends and family/ supportive figures are critical to restoring the psychic energy required to cope with racism-related stress

  • Immigrants may feel pressure to manage impressions of their ethnic or religious communities in efforts to counteract negative stereotypes and reduce discrimination or aggression

  • It may reduce visible discrimination on the community, giving the impression that things are better than they actually are

  • It can diminish the recognition of the real maginilzation and trauma that members of the community experience 

  • Denial and minimization of these issues arise from a fear of being targeted - acknowledging marginalization might inviter more hostility 

  • One has to potentially sacrifice authenticity to be seen and accepted by the majority group, and secure safety 

  • Racial Minority immigrants experience anxiety, confusion, and despair related to not knowing how to be fully seen and present and at the same time invisible to the majority group 


Influence of the Premigration Context 


  • Premigration class identities can become amplified in the new country, shaping immigrants' identities and adjustment 

  • Varana (Caste) - descending social status (social class) - categorizing people based on birth and influences their social status, occupation, and relationships 

  • Immigrants from upper caste or privileged classes may cling to past social status, maintaining a sense of superiority even when those distinctions lose significance in the US 

  • Immigrants often manage their identity by distancing themselves from other immigrants or marginalized groups, reflecting anxiety about their social belonging and power in a new context 


Overview/Purpose of the Article


  • Describes psychoanalytic perspectives on roots of xenophobia and defense mechanisms used in relation to race 

  • Presents psychoanalytic understanding of the experiences of immigrants to the United States from marginalized communities, especially BIPOC 

  • This shows how upstream structural forces and oppression can be considered with a psychoanalytic lens 


  • Explores clinical implications - how do these processes manifest in therapy? 

  • How do psychoanalysts work in therapy with both internalized (unconscious) and overt expressions of racism?

  • How do psychoanalysts think about therapist-patient differences in identity and privilege?

  • The paper was written following the 2016 election, which brought particular unconscious dynamics into action. We are now in a time of similar sociopolitical unrest. 


Xenophobia


  • Xenophobia - fear and hatred of strangers or foreigners or anything that appears strange or foreign - is not the same as racism but they overlap, two different concepts 

  • Ethnocentrism -belief that a certain nation, state, culture, or community is superior to other 

  • As we know, everyone has ethnocentrist beliefs 

  • Xenophobia and immigration are linked 

  • Xenophobia is lower among people who have more contact with immigrants - at a personal level our fears go down 

  • However, Xenophobia increases when immigration increases at a societal level - at a more societal level our fears go up


  • Xenophobia is “experienced in conscious and unconscious life and embedded in early object relations and structural privilege and marginalization

  • Early object relations - the ways early childhood experiences with parents/caretakers have been internalized; very similar concept to internal working models in attachment theory 

  • So this model considers both downstream (individual, intrapsychic) and upstream (structural) forces in xenophobia





Xenophobia and Racism 


  • Xenophobia and racism are “mutually supporting forms of oppression”

  • Immigrants of color experience both forms of oppression - immigrant white people don't experience xenophobia and racism but immigrants of color do

  • Xenophobia takes internal (intrapsychic) and external (interpersonal) forms 

  • Internal - attitudes and beliefs about self and other 

  • External - interpersonal actions fueled by prejudice


Psychoanalytic Theories of Experiences of Immigrants 


  • Experience of immigration is complex and multi-layered 

  • Complexities and challenges apply to both clients and therapists who are immigrants 

  • Because xenophobia and racism are parts of everyone’s reality and identity, they should be explored in psychotherapy 

  • This is similar to Wilcox’s argument!


  • Desire for the privileges of whiteness, including protection from racism 

  • But this may not seem to mean disowning one’s ethnic identity (which is often a source of strength) - they disown parts of their identity like Anika spending more time with white people than people of her own ethnicity because she feels it is safer

  • “Impression management” 

  • Being a “minority” means having less power (ex. Being marginalized) 

  • BIPOC are both invisible to the white “majority” and also criticized


  • Influence of premigration (pre-migration) context

  • Racial/ethnic/social class hierarchies - immigrants may try to distance themselves from “typical” immigrants by remaining connected to these hierarchies 

  • These hierarchies infuse the immigrant’s mind and thus are part of the context of immigration for them 













Relevant Psychoanalytic Processes


  • Ambivalence - we always also hate the ones we love - when we allow ourselves to love someone we are also at risk of hating them - if you love someone everything about them matters; you are less tolerant of people you love beliefs because you want the best for them and you do not want them to have bad qualities 

  • Identification - 

  • Children identify (unconsciously) with their parents as part of their development; they become like their parents by adopting characteristics, desires, and values to stay close to them

  • When children identify with their parents, they may take on parents’ prejudice beliefs and societal racism 

  • A person may feel that questioning or rejecting a parent’s beliefs means rejecting or losing the parent


Relevant Psychoanalytic Processes


  •  Hating someone we love feels bad so we use defense mechanisms (aka defenses) to keep the hate out of awareness

  • Projection - perceiving hated aspects of self (or another person such as part) as part of someone else (Ex. someone perceived as different, less than), not the loved one (or self) - projecting your own thoughts and feelings onto someone else

  • Unconscious scapegoating - a defense mechanism where someone blames another person or group for something bad that happened 

  • Model minority myth - people make it sound like we have a system to get ahead but reinforce hierarchy 

  • Dissociation - keeping hated and loved aspects segregated - to keep the love and hate separated 

  • Splitting - seeing people (including self) as all good or all bad Ex. Is John a good white person or a bad white person


Case Vignette #1


  • John’s view of immigrants was 

  • An attempt to regain a sense of power by identifying with powerful people and whiteness, and by dissociating from powerless people (certain immigrants) 

  • Mirrored in the therapist’s countertransference (there are good and bad white people) 

  • A tie to his parents, who he loved and hated and did not want to lose 





Case Vignette #2


  • Anika’s view of immigrants was 

  • An attempt to protect herself from being marginalized (making friends with white people. Avoiding other Indian immigrants)

  • An attempt to distance herself from internalized colorism from her mother and caste bias from her father