From Race to Risk: Framing Haitians in Dominican Policies and Discourses on Migration, 2020–2025

Migration between Haiti and the Dominican Republic has long reflected Hispaniola’s intertwined histories of grievances, distrust, inequality, and interdependence. Under President Luis Abinader (2020–2025), this relationship gained renewed political significance as regional instability and Haiti’s institutional collapse made migration a central concern of governance. This study examines the Dominican state’s discourse on Haitian migration through a combination of historiographical interpretation and discourse-historical frame analysis. Using the diagnostic–prognostic–motivational triad, this analysis examines 26 official statements, legal documents, and media articles to trace how notions of order, security, and humanitarian responsibility have structured migration policy during this period. The findings identify four interrelated logics—securitisation, nativism, racialisation, and statelessness—that shape how migration is problematised and managed. While overtly xenophobic or racist language has largely disappeared from official discourse, older anti-Haitian hierarchies persist beneath a technocratic and humanitarian surface. Deportations, biometric border management, mass detentions, violence, and preferential bureaucratic practices are presented as neutral governance, even as they disproportionately and unlawfully affect darker-skinned citizens and migrants of Haitian descent. The analysis suggests that Dominican migration governance represents neither rupture nor continuity, but rather a rearticulation of narratives of security, sovereignty, and national identity in a context of contemporary securitising issues in Haiti.