Entry Denied

by Luibheid, Eithne

• ISBN13: 9780816638048
• ISBN10: 0816638047
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-11-01
• Publisher: Univ of Minnesota Pr

Summary

Lesbians, prostitutes, women likely to have sex across racial lines, "brought to the United States for immoral purposes, " or "arriving in a state of pregnancy" -- national threats, one and all. Since the late nineteenth century, immigrant women's sexuality has been viewed as a threat to national security, to be contained through strict border-monitoring practices. By scrutinizing this policy, its origins, and its application, Eithne Luibheid shows how the U.S. border became a site not just for controlling female sexuality but also for contesting, constructing, and renegotiating sexual identity.

Initially targeting Chinese women, immigration control based on sexuality rapidly expanded to encompass every woman who sought entry to the United States. The particular cases Luibheid examines -- efforts to differentiate Chinese prostitutes from wives, the 1920s exclusion of Japanese wives to reduce the Japanese-American birthrate, the deportation of a Mexican woman on charges of lesbianism, the role of rape in mediating women's border crossings today -- challenge co

Author Biography

Eithne Luibheid is assistant professor of ethnic studies at Bowling Green State University in Ohio.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	vii
Introduction	ix
Power and Sexuality at the Border
Entry Denied	1	(30)
A History of U.S. Immigration Control
A Blueprint for Exclusion	31	(24)
The Page Law, Prostitution, and Discrimination against Chinese Women
Birthing a Nation	55	(22)
Race, Ethnicity, and Childbearing
Looking Like a Lesbian	77	(26)
Sexual Monitoring at the U.S.--Mexico Border
Rape, Asylum, and the U.S. Border Patrol	103	(34)
Conclusion	137	(10)
Sexuality, Immigration, and Resistance
Appendix	147	(12)
Sexuality Considerations in the Refugee/Asylum System
Notes	159	(80)
Index	239