(Note: This article was originally written as a final paper for the DKU class, CULMOV201, Migration, Inequality and Culture)
“As a group member, rather, he(the stranger) is near and far at the same time, as is characteristic of relations founded only on generally human commonness.”[1]
Pg. 3, ‘The Stranger,’ by Georg Simmel
Georg Simmel’s conception of ‘The Stranger,’ despite being written in a modern, urban context, encapsulates the paradoxical position of migrants within structures of power throughout history. Whether in pre-modern empires, colonial systems, nation states, migrants—as ‘strangers in motion’—have been and are simultaneously essential yet exploited by power structures to serve ideological and economic ends. By leveraging identity constructs like race, the state ultimately regulates the extent to which migrants are “near and far at the same time” relative to non-migrants—to the state’s benefit.[2] Through this lens, this essay argues that structures of power have historically created and exploited migration to construct and/or manipulate identities that serve their interests—all of which perpetuate inequalities not just between the ‘migrant’ and the state, but between and within migrant and non-migrant groups. Examining the relationship between New Julfans and the pre-modern Safavid Empire, the British colonial state’s racialization of the Irish in St. Kitts during the 17th Century, and the modern cases of Chinese and Mexican immigrants and Muslims in Europe, reveals the persistent—and perhaps inevitable—pattern of state exploitation, with migrants bearing the full weight as ‘strangers in motion.’
The case of the Julfan Armenians and the Safavid empire illustrates how pre-modern imperial structures of power, through forceful displacement and strategic incorporation of migrant communities into the imperial framework, not only perpetuate their marginalized position but also maintain a ”special proportion” of “nearness and farness” between them and non-migrants.[3] When Shah Abbas I implemented scorched-earth tactics in the Safavid-Ottoman wars of 1603-1605, the Safavid empire destroyed the town of Old Julfa and forcibly relocated up to 300,000 Armenians including the Julfan merchants to Isfahan.[4] While the journey took the lives of many of the deportees, the empire granted the Julfan merchants land in New Julfa and special privileges such as administrative and religious autonomy far above those of typical dhimmi communities.[5] This is due to their reputation as merchants, language skills, and wide-ranging trade-networks, which made them indispensable to the Safavid silk trade—crucial to the economic prosperity of the Empire.[6] This displacement transformed the Julfans as “servants of power,” entirely dependent on the Shah, and by extension, the empire—for their prosperity and safety.[7] Applying Simmel’s framework, this made the Julfans strangers both ‘near and far’. Being Christian meant that they could freely enter Sunni-Ottoman empires to conduct trade during conflicts, a role other Safavid subjects are unable to fulfill.[8]However, their privileges perpetually isolated them within Safavid society. Their case particularly highlights the “special proportion” that Simmel speaks of about strangehood, for they certainly are ‘nearer’ to the state than the average dhimmi community to enjoy special privileges yet ‘far’ enough to not have a real sense of autonomy that could threaten their usefulness to the empire. Ultimately, the case of the Julfans shows how the pre-modern empire utilizes the unique identity of ‘strangers in motion’, or subjects they incorporated in the process of expansion for their own economic benefit while maintaining their marginalized position.
In the colonial context, the racialization of the Irish as ‘white’ within St. Kitts in 1670 demonstrated how power structures began using law to construct new racial identities to fulfill their economic and ideological interests, which led to the simultaneous ‘nearing’ of the Irish to the British state while ‘furthering’ them from their allies, the Africans. The French saw the outbreak of the Anglo-Dutch War of 1665 as an opportunity to seize the entirety of St. Kitts, both a British and French colony, for themselves.[9] Ideally for the British, Irish indentured servants that came to work for them would defend the British side of the island on their behalf. However, as Britain’s first colonized group and Catholics banned from practicing within a Protestant-based empire, they bore strong resentment. They found commonality with the African slaves working side by side as a colonized people.[10] Through the lens of Simmel, the state created conditions that emphasized the ‘nearness’ between the Irish and Africans. With the Irish able to practice Catholicism on the side of the French and having found solidarity with the African slaves, the Irish deserted the British and fought for the French to take over the English side of St. Kitts.[11] The Irish involvement ultimately led to the British’s loss and transformed the Irish into a ‘problem’—a group of people who prevented the colonial state from achieving their imperial goals.[12] In response, the British state, finding ‘human commonness’ with the Irish via skin color, racialized them together with the colonizers as ‘white’, while also implementing differential laws that othered them from the African slaves.[13] Additionally, they allowed them to freely practice their religion.[14] Having lost the Irish as part of the labour force, the British used the African slaves as their replacement. This triggered the British’s increased reliance on the Africans as labour, justified in the name of not being ‘white.’[15] The colonial state shifted the Irish’s sense of ‘nearness’ from the African slaves’ to the ‘colonizers.’ distancing them from their former allies. However, the Irish never truly lost their ‘stranger’ status to the British. Drawing upon Simmel, having had to find ‘human commonness’ further emphasized the unbridgeable gap between them. This manifests in the fact that the Irish who remained in St. Kitts, while also ‘white,’ only became “overseers, small-scale slave owners and maroon catchers,” never “big planters” as the British could.[16] Cumulatively, the case of St. Kitts highlights how the colonial state manipulated the sense of ‘nearness’ and ‘farness’ both between and within migrants and non-migrants, ultimately isolating all parties from each other for the benefit of the state.
The case of the Chinese and Mexican migrants in America during the 20th century demonstrates how the nation-state legally manipulated “nearness and farness” between different migrant groups and non-migrant to fulfill their ideological and economic needs. Yet, even as migrants like the Chinese Americans become the ‘model minority’ on top of a pyramid of ‘hierarchal strangehood,’ their identity as ‘strangers in motion’ only reinforced their utilitarian role. During the exclusion era in the late 19th to early 20th century, the American nation-state vilified Chinese migrants who came to America to work low-class jobs as “prostitutes” and drug dealers” following China’s defeat in the Opium Wars—reflecting domestic nativism.[17] At the peak of this sentiment—1920—the immigration quota system was introduced specifically to target Chinese immigrants.[18] However, by the mid 20th century, geopolitical concerns during the Cold War reformed the Chinese, specifically, students and intellectuals, into “refugees of war.” This simultaneously positioned them as contributors to the post WW2 economic boom and victims of communism following the Communist victory of the Chinese Civil War.[19] These developments came with several shifts in legal policy culminating in the 1965 Immigration Act which removed the quota system which vilified them not many decades ago, just to project America as a bastion of democracy and modernity.[20] Yet, the same act which allowed Chinese Americans more social mobility also legally transformed the Mexicans migrants—who had regularly traversed into American borders as workers through laws like the Bracero Program—into “immigrants.”[21] This was also driven by economic demands following the conclusion of the Civil Rights movement, which granted African Americans rights that made them more expensive to hire.[22] The role of the ‘worker’ at the bottom of the hierarchy previously held by the Chinese and the African Americans consequently fell to the Mexicans. The legally created categories brought the Chinese ‘nearer,’ elevating them to a ‘model minority,’ while ‘furthering’ the Mexicans, putting them below the African Americans. Altogether, this ultimately created a kind of ‘hierarchical strangerhood,’ pitting migrants against each other and segregated them from non-migrants while simultaneously reinforcing the ideological power structure.
The scrutinization of Muslim migrants in the 21st century, both a continuation of modern patterns seen with Chinese and Mexican migrants in 20th century America and a testament to the enduring nature of state manipulation of ‘nearness and farness’—underscores how contemporary states exploit fear and exclusionary rhetoric to maintain power. As Nail argues, following events like the 2005 London Bombings and 2015 Paris attacks, migrants and terrorists were conflated as doppelgängers in nationalist rhetoric, casting Muslim refugees who fled Cold War geopolitics as ideological threats akin to “barbarian invasions.”[23] This conflation justified increasingly restrictive measures and securitization policies. For example, following the Paris attacks, the European Union implemented stricter border security measures, including the construction of fences and fortified checkpoints, which physically and symbolically entrenched their ‘farness’ from non-migrants despite already deeply integrated within European spaces.[24] Unlike earlier examples, however, the Muslim case highlights how this strategy persists well-into the 21st century, even within a more globalized world that casts itself as supportive to human rights and interconnectedness. Through Simmel’s lens, the perpetual framing of migrants as ‘strangers in motion’ unveil remarkable continuity of these mechanisms of power. Ultimately, despite contextual differences, the fundamental exploitation of migrants as essential yet subordinate figures remain prevalent in state strategies to consolidate ideological dominance, perpetuating inequality.
While the Julfan Armenians, the Irish indentured servants, and the modern cases of the Chinese Americans, Mexican and Muslims in Europe, remained ‘strangers’ within their structure of power, the Hadhramis offer a contrasting trajectory—where rather than forever being sidelined as a ‘stranger of motion,’ they could integrate into the power structure without maintaining their ‘stranger’ status. By engaging in ‘total prestation,’ they shifted their position through ‘equally’ reciprocal exchanges, including intermarriage with imperial elites within the Indian Ocean extending as far as modern-day Southeast Asia.[25] For instance, the genealogical ties of Malaysia’s current Foreign Minister to Prophet Muhammad underscore how the Hadhramis had been able to negotiate not just economic but also social and political inclusion.[26] By marrying into elite families and aligning their identity with the ruling power’s interests, they transcended their ‘stranger’ status, demonstrating that the boundaries of ‘nearness’ and ‘farness’ are porous and negotiable. This suggests that while state-like structures often entrench inequality by exploiting migrants, certain groups possess the agency to recalibrate their relationship with these systems. Overall, the Hadhramis underline how the category of ‘the stranger’ is not one that is static, but rather could be renegotiated through special means such as ‘total prestation.’ However, it must be highlighted that means for migrants to equalize their position with larger structures of power like ‘total prestation’ appear to be few and far in between, with most migrants entering and remaining subordinate as demonstrated through the other examples.
Applying Simmel’s concept of ‘The Stranger’ across these case studies reveals striking continuity of how states manipulate migration and identity to consolidate power. Be it the Safavid Empire’s utilization of Julfan Armenians for economic gain, the colonial racialization of the Irish as ‘white’, or the modern manipulation of legal frameworks that hierarchized the Chinese, Mexican Americans and European Muslims, the state has consistently leveraged their identity to regulate “nearness and farness.” While the mechanisms evolved—from forced displacement to legal frameworks to securitization policies—the essential dynamic of the migrant as an exploited yet indispensable figure persists. Migrant groups like the Hadhramis act as a rare exception, able to perform ‘total prestation’ to transcend ‘strangerhood.’ Ultimately, these examples not only highlight the enduring imbalance between mobility and authority but how as ‘strangers of motion’, migrants become the ideal scapegoat to regulate identity and perpetuate inequality across time and space.
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[1] Georg Simmel, “The Stranger,” 1950, https://www.infoamerica.org/documentos_pdf/simmel01.pdf, 3.
[2] Simmel, “The Stranger,” 3.
[3] Simmel, “The Stranger,” 3.
[4] Sebough David Aslanian, “From Trade Diasporas to Circulation Societies,” in From the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean: The Global Trade Networks of Armenians from New Julfa (University of California Press, 2011), 1.
[5] Aslanian, “From Trade Diasporas to Circulation Societies,” 1.
[6] Aslanian, “From Trade Diasporas to Circulation Societies,” 1.
[7] Aslanian, “From Trade Diasporas to Circulation Societies,” 1; Aslanian, “From Trade Diasporas to Circulation Societies,” 2.
[8] Aslanian, “From Trade Diasporas to Circulation Societies,” 1; Aslanian, “From Trade Diasporas to Circulation Societies,” 2.
[9] James F. Dator, “Between the Mountains and the Seas: Knowledge, Networks, and Transimperial Dissertation in the Leeward Archipelago, 1627-1727,” in A Global History of Runaways, ed. Marcus Rediker, Titas Chakraborty, and Matthias van Rossum (University of California Press, 2019), 63.
[10] Dator, “Between the Mountains and the Seas,” 63.
[11] Dator, “Between the Mountains and the Seas,” 63.
[12] Dator, “Between the Mountains and the Seas,” 64.
[13] Dator, “Between the Mountains and the Seas,” 64.
[14] Dator, “Between the Mountains and the Seas,” 64.
[15] Dator, “Between the Mountains and the Seas,” 66.
[16] Dator, “Between the Mountains and the Seas,” 66.
[17] Madeline Y. Hsu, “Befriending the ‘Yellow Peril’: Chinese Students and Intellectuals and the Liberalization of U.S. Immigration Laws, 1950–1965,” Journal of American-East Asian Relations 16, no. 3 (2009): 142, https://doi.org/10.1163/187656109793645634.
[18] Hsu, “Befriending the ‘Yellow Peril’,” 144.
[19] Hsu, “Befriending the ‘Yellow Peril’,” 152.
[20] Hsu, “Befriending the ‘Yellow Peril’,” 145.
[21] Aviva Chomsky, “Choosing to Be Undocumented,” in Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal (Beacon Press, 2014), 51.
[22] Aviva Chomsky, “Where Did Illegality Come From?” in Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal (Beacon Press, 2014), 44.
[23] Thomas Nail, “A Tale of Two Crises: Migration and Terrorism after the Paris Attacks,” Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism 16, no. 1 (April 2016): 164, https://doi.org/10.1111/sena.12168.
[24] Nail, “A Tale of Two Crises,” 158.
[25] Engseng Ho, “Names beyond Nations,” Études Rurales, no. 163-164 (January 1, 2002): 225, https://doi.org/10.4000/etudesrurales.7980.
[26] Ho, “Names beyond Nations,” 229.
