This Master s dissertation seeks to explore former US president Donald J. Trump s proposal to build a physical barrier along the entire Southern border throughout the years of his campaign and presidency (2015 - 2020). More specifically, it seeks to question the role played by the border wall, built only partially in physical terms but extensively fortified in discursive and symbolic ones, considering Trump’s affectively charged rhetoric which narrated a scenario of existential crisis in America, appealing to feelings of ontological insecurity among his constituency. While the project to construct the physical border wall itself was filled with inconsistencies and technical challenges, the symbolic wall evoked by Trump repeatedly through discourse seemed to play an overarching role which went beyond the physical barrier, and was a core element in Trump’s political agenda throughout his entire presidency wherever immigration policy was concerned. What, then, are the possible pathways for understanding how and why the wall withstands discursively and politically even as it seems to fail practically? For this task, this work of research employs a two-fold approach by first suggesting thinking about Trump s discursive framings of the border wall critically through a Lacanian approach to ontological security and, secondly, by arguing for a more attentive look towards the social and economic contexts to which the symbolic wall responds and which enables it to resonate so widely through discourse, exploring the lived experiences of impoverished and often angrily resentful Trump supporters under decades of progressive-neoliberal hegemony.