the language used to talk about eucalypts as an ecological menace and the language used to ostracize illegal immigrants as social pariahs is similar. Both discourses make use of epithets—“eucs” or “wetbacks”—to distance and demonize. Both eucalypts and immigrants are often derided for uncontrolled reproduction and the danger they pose to native ways of life, whether that be biological competition for growing space or economic competition for jobs. In a strange twist the eucalypts are anthropomorphized in order to be dehumanized, and illegal immigrants are dehumanized in order to be
...more
