The Immigrant as Other: Racial Capitalism, Neoliberalism, and Necropolitics in Laila Lalami’s The Other Americans

Abstract

This paper examines Laila Lalami’s The Other Americans (2019) through synthesising racial capitalism, neoliberalism, and necropolitics to illuminate how post-9/11 violence operates through economic mechanisms. Through contextual and close analysis of Driss Guerraoui’s entrepreneurial journey and tragic death, the research reveals how immigrant entrepreneurship paradoxically functions as a site of inclusion and elimination within America’s racialised economic landscape. The paper demonstrates how market participation intensifies rather than ameliorates immigrant vulnerability, while neoliberal multiculturalism’s celebration of immigrant success actively enables racial violence while obscuring structural inequalities. Lalami’s novel exposes how economic participation becomes weaponised as a surveillance and control mechanism. The analysis extends beyond individual narrative to examine how systemic violence against MENA communities is legitimised through neoliberal ideologies that obscure structural inequalities beneath administrative discourses. This analysis provides crucial methodological tools for scrutinising how immigrant economic “success” marks certain bodies for elimination within post-9/11 America’s security apparatus, challenging dominant narratives of assimilation and belonging.