Editor's Notes: The Endurance of Biopolitics

Donald Trump's immigration obsession does not really represent a technocratic argument about the optimal administration of border controls. Respectable elites will occasionally try to dress up the topic in the garb of "law and order," but as MAGA faithful chant "mass deportation now," as Stephen Miller rants about removing 20 or 30 million people from the United States, as ICE and CBP run riot in American cities, that song and dance feels a bit old.

Rather, Trump's immigration obsession is, manifestly, a form of biopolitics, that is, making the population composition of the state an object of politics. However, this is hardly unique to MAGA. Insurgent right-wing parties across the Western world have made population control a clear objective of their political movements. They wish to reduce immigration in order to create more homogeneous nation-states that contain more of "us" and fewer of "them." It is no accident that these anti-immigrant zealots are often equally obsessed with the total fertility rate in their societies—at least, the TFR of the right kind of women, anyways.

In other words, the desired end-state for far-right politics today is frequently reduced immigration, or even emigration of immigrants of the "wrong" social category, coupled with increased birthrates among women of the "right" social category. A look at the comparative history of such policies is instructive.