ABSTRACT
The 2016 Trump presidential campaign and administration frequently employed anti-immigrant rhetoric in setting forth national policy agendas. Narratives of Latinx border-crossers as dangerous racial others seem to have nourished a public acceptance of prejudice against them—a phenomenon social psychologists have referred to as the “Trump Effect.” In this chapter, we draw on our anthropological research in Orlando, Florida, to reveal the intensification of racism in ordinary social situations and the terrifying impact of anti-immigrant policies on everyday life. Building on existing scholarship, we argue that the formation of national borders extends far beyond the materiality of geopolitical barriers to social performances of differentiation. With a focus on immigrant experiences of abjection in the Trump era, we analyze the quotidian practices that produce interior borderlands of exclusion and fear.
