Concept: Alien

Definition: belonging to a foreign country or nation.

Related Terms: Stranger; Foreigner; Other; Sojourner

Description: There is something at once forbidding and familiar about the term ‘alien,’ given its widespread use in the twenty-first century to designate: people, extra-terrestrial creatures, viruses, unfamiliar or resistant ways of life and cultural practices, spiritual exiles. Migrants are aliens by definition, and as such, often serve to capture some of the negative associations of foreignness. Synonymous with ‘stranger’ and ‘foreigner,’ alien has been traced back several centuries as a word that described the non-citizen, the outsider to a community. It has retained this meaning, although it is most commonly associated with science fiction. Here aliens were the product of Darwinian evolutionary theory and initially pointed to people from other countries, religions, or social groups who were strange but not completely unfamiliar. As anxiety over evolution grew and people felt disconnected from their surroundings, aliens morphed into monsters and grotesque creatures, far removed from the human world but allegorical representations of humans who were considered different or dangerous. Alien has retained this ambiguous status as a concept that points to both outside and inside the self or society.

The history of alien as a legal term for immigrants, particularly in the British context, bears this out. Up to the 1880s, no administrative structures existed to record arrivals and departures at British ports. During the great age of mobility (1880-1920) many eastern Europeans were forced to leave their countries and settled in densely populated areas in the UK. These neighborhoods became a cause for concern and restrictionists demanded immigration controls, citing the settler colonies of Canada, Natal, Cape Colony, Australia, New Zealand and Tasmania where legislation restricting ‘aliens’ –Chinese, Indians, and even ‘morally undesirable’ Englishmen — was already in place. In the U.S. too, various forms of legislation restricted alien entry. Britain was reluctant, however, to give up its tradition of granting asylum to the persecuted. However, by 1903, various bills promoting immigration restriction had been considered and the Aliens Act was passed in 1905.

Fears of been overrun by immigrants, beginning with the 1892 publication of W.H. Wilkins’ The Alien Invasion, have surfaced regularly, displaced onto aliens from outer space. In 1938 Orson Welles’ radio drama, War of the Worlds, struck terror in people’s hearts. More recently, aliens have populated a variety of film and television dramas and science fiction narratives. Post-apocalyptic scenarios push the boundaries of imagining the unknown as the presence of aliens presses ever closer.

S.C. 2016

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