Hate Speech and Hate by Design

This article explores hate speech as a governing logic embedded in Serbia’s migration management, extending beyond explicit verbal hostility to encompass institutionalized silence, public spectacles, and policy design. Drawing on speech act theory, critical discourse analysis, and scholarship on racialized governance, it conceptualizes hate speech as a performative act with perlocutionary force. Through ethnographic and discursive analysis, the article shows how people on the move are rendered both hyper-visible and absent – criminalized, pitied, or erased – depending on political need. It argues that hate speech, framed through calculated ambivalence and absent presence, sustains exclusionary practices and legitimizes state and societal violence against migrants.