Tuesday, November 23, 2021

extranjerización: foreignerization

I've blogged before about the terms gendered, and racialized, and ethnicized. Well, yes, you can also be foreignerized. Yup, totally made up that neologism - but I like it. That has zippo googlage but foreignerization has a tiny bit. I learned the term first in castellano, de Melisa Yaleva, who was on a great panel with me titled "Sentir-pensar la traducción: geopolitics of knowledge and south-north dialogues" que fue parte del Segundo Encuentro Latinoamericano de Movimientos Socioespaciales y Socioterritoriales. You can watch it online here. Melisa talked about being foreignerized as a woman with darker skin in Argentina, where people always assume that she is from some other country. Several Colombians with red or blond hair have told me that the same happens to them. It's a useful term for understanding these dynamics, we should use it more often! 

I will note however that the German word ''Überfremdung'', widely used by anti-immigrant parties, is translated as over-foreignerization and one assumes they mean something entirely different by that. But let's not let them steal the word from us!