Strangers, Scapegoats and State Failures: Migration Anxieties in Christopher Marlowe's The Jew of Malta

Abstract: This essay situates Christopher Marlowe's The Jew of Malta within the context of the Elizabethan "Stranger Crisis" and reconsiders the portrayal of Barabas in relation to the xenophobic sentiments directed at Continental immigrants. Rather than endorsing the prevailing stranger-as-threat reading, the essay argues that Marlowe exposes the precarious position of immigrant communities and reframes the alleged transgressions attributed to them. The essay further demonstrates how the play illuminates a scapegoating logic through which the host nation displaces responsibility for its own economic, religious, and political failures onto alien populations. The Jew of Malta prompts both its original audience and modern readers to confront not only the futility of such a strategy but also its haunting recurrence across historical cycles.