Democracia, neoliberalismo e crise humanitária: a legitimidade de políticas anti-imigração e seus efeitos à ordem democrática

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to analyze the relationship between neoliberalism, democracy and human rights, in a context of a humanitarian crisis in which there is an increase in the flow of migrants and refugees around the globe, highlighting a challenging scenario for countries that, although they consider themselves democratic, are not capable of maintaining the institutional commitments arising from the choice of this political system. In this perspective, the research seeks to treat neoliberalism as the foundation of anti-immigration policies, in the light of the idea that this ideological current is a form of social regulation that seeks to annul individuality in favor of standardizing citizens to market interests, which allows the legitimation of these measures in the social scene. In addition, the paper focuses on the political ascension tendency of outsiders in recent years, such as Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro, who, aware of the political dissatisfaction of the elites with the attendance of governments to minority groups, including immigrants, seek to institutionalize the political upheaval and the ethnic rivalry between peoples, from the negation of the other and the differences, in an egocentric valorization of nationalism and the search for the reconstruction of the national identity, leading to beliefs about the end or about a rupture of democracy. Finally, it is understood that although anti-immigration policies do in fact cause institutional tension in democratic orders, democracy has always shown a laudable ability to manage crisis circumstances, and it is therefore believed that this political regime will survive the waves of conservatism which are exposed, although probably not unharmed.