Document Type

Honors

Department

Political Science

Abstract

The first step to solving any problem is admitting you have one. The Dominican government is in denial of a problem that is clearly noticeable to others. The government claims that there is no racial discrimination in the country and that anything said by the international community asserting the opposite is just a conspiracy against the State. Regardless of the Dominican Republic’s position, it is clear that immigration policies in the Dominican Republic are a source of racialization. Immigration policy was the vehicle the government used to drive the national processes of racialization, the construction of racial identities, and the continuance of and disputes over racial boundaries in the country. Dominicans of Haitian descent, black Dominicans, and Haitian immigrants have been facing many obstacles that have been intentionally placed to obstruct them from enjoying the right to citizenship that had been guaranteed to them by the Dominican Constitution up until 2010. This paper analyzes the process of racialization in the Dominican Republic. In order to analyze racialization, I will examine different pieces of legislation passed by the Dominican government, among them a 2013 Dominican Constitutional Court ruling, which revoked citizenship from Dominicans of Haitian descent. Having examined the different pieces of legislation, as well as different international treaties that protect individuals from being discriminated against, I have come to the conclusion that the ruling along with other anti-Haitian policies undertaken by the Dominican government are discriminatory, and constitute a direct violation of human rights.

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