European states mask citizens’ eroding rights by contrasting them with immigrants’ absent rights

Evidence

Etienne Balibar points out that European states increasingly obfuscate the steadily eroding rights of citizens in the wake of globalized deindustrialization since the 1950s. They do so by contrasting these increasingly “thin” rights to the “empty” or absent rights of foreigners and immigrants. The steadily expanding demands across Europe for immigrants and refugees to meet stringent language and cultural testing suggests just this purpose. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 928

Categorization

• XREF: Directly parallels the logic in ‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist’ and general scapegoating dynamics; also resonates with the moral-panic mechanisms from the reader’s prior chapters on panic and modesty.
• DEEPTHINKING: Explains a core mechanism whereby rights erosion is socially rerouted into boundary-drawing against foreigners; the language-testing pivot is a concrete, verifiable instance of a subtle ideological obfuscation.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 928