Like a human body, nations are imagined to have boundaries— that must defend against alien cells continually seeking to invade this body politic.

Immigrants are conceived as alien invaders creeping through porous boundaries—penetrating and threatening to destroy a vulnerable self.

Immigrants generate hysteria (a psychosomatic symptom)—mass hysteria.

Boundaries must be firmed up: walls erected to protect against not-self-others seeking to become parasitic upon the body polity: to drain the self of its substance.