María Emilia Tijoux is a sociologist, professor and researcher from the Department of Sociology in the Faculty of Social Sciences at the Universidad de Chile. She coordinates the doctorate in Social Sciences and the Research Nucleus for the Sociology of the Body and Emotions. She directs the magazine Actuel Marx Intervenciones. Her research addresses immigration in the last decades, xenophobia, racism, and the sexualization and racialization of immigrants, as well as processes of dehumanization. She is editor of the book Racismo en Chile: la piel como marca de la inmigración.
The Body as Scar: Colonial Relations and Racist Violence
The immigrant body does not need to reveal what it contains. Today, its mere presence produces contempt and repeated punishment. Its features, color, gender, coupled with a lack of economic capital, configure it as a body available for the extraction of labor. This dehumanization is not new; it comes from colonial history and the construction of a nation-state based on a white-European view, which marks a separation between a predator Master and a subjected servant, amid the neoliberal chaos that favors unequal distribution among humans.
