Grammars of exclusion: demography, disinformation and democracy in contemporary human geographies

Abstract

This article proposes a critical and multidisciplinary reading of the articulations between demography, disinformation and democracy, arguing that contemporary population transformations constitute a privileged terrain of political and symbolic contestation. Drawing on critical border and migration studies, and in dialogue with contributions from international relations, critical human geography and political science, the text analyses how demographic knowledge can produce grammars of exclusion articulated sets of narratives, categories and practices that organise differentiated access to belonging, dignity and fundamental rights. The article develops the illustrative case of the migrant figure, historically constructed as an ambivalent subject, at once a necessary contribution and a simultaneous threat. This ambivalence constitutes the narrative structure underpinning cultures of border control and spatially situated practices of exclusion. The Portuguese case of disinformation illustrates how these grammars become sedimented in contemporary public debate. It concludes that the quality of democracy depends on the capacity of societies to resist the naturalisation of hierarchies of dignity and to build politics of belonging grounded in human rights.