Impossible Subjects

by Ngai, Mae M.

• ISBN13: 9780691124292
• ISBN10: 0691124299
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-08-08
• Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr

Summary

This book traces the origins of the "illegal alien" in American law and society, explaining why and how illegal migration became the central problem in U.S. immigration policy--a process that profoundly shaped ideas and practices about citizenship, race, and state authority in the twentieth century. Mae Ngai offers a close reading of the legal regime of restriction that commenced in the 1920s--its statutory architecture, judicial genealogies, administrative enforcement, differential treatment of European and non-European migrants, and long-term effects. In well-drawn historical portraits, Ngai peoples her study with the Filipinos, Mexicans, Japanese, and Chinese who comprised, variously, illegal aliens, alien citizens, colonial subjects, and imported contract workers. She shows that immigration restriction, particularly national-origin and numerical quotas, re-mapped the nation both by creating new categories of racial difference and by emphasizing as never before the nation's contiguous land borders and their patrol. This yielded the "illegal alien," a new legal and political subject whose inclusion in the nation was a social reality but a legal impossibility--a subject without rights and excluded from citizenship. Questions of fundamental legal status created new challenges for liberal democratic society and have directly informed the politics of multiculturalism and national belonging in our time. Ngai's analysis is based on extensive archival research, including previously unstudied records of the U.S. Border Patrol and Immigration and Naturalization Service. Contributing to American history, legal history, and ethnic studies, Impossible Subjects is a major reconsideration of U.S. immigration in the twentieth century.

Table of Contents

List of Figures and Illustrations	xi
List of Tables	xiii
Acknowledgments	xv
Note on Language and Terminology	xix
Introduction Illegal Aliens: A Problem of Law and History	1	(14)
PART I: THE REGIME OF QUOTAS AND PAPERS	15	(76)
The Johnson-Reed Act of 1924 and the Reconstruction of Race in Immigration Law	21	(35)
Deportation Policy and the Making and Unmaking of Illegal Aliens	56	(35)
PART II: MIGRANTS AT THE MARGINS OF LAW AND NATION	91	(76)
From Colonial Subject to Undesirable Alien: Filipino Migration in the Invisible Empire	96	(31)
Braceros, ``Wetbacks,'' and the National Boundaries of Class	127	(40)
PART III: WAR, NATIONALISM, AND ALIEN CITIZENSHIP	167	(58)
The World War II Internment of Japanese Americans and the Citizenship Renunciation Cases	175	(27)
The Cold War Chinese Immigration Crisis and the Confession Cases	202	(23)
PART IV: PLURALISM AND NATIONALISM IN POST-WORLD WAR II IMMIGRATION REFORM	225	(40)
The Liberal Critique and Reform of Immigration Policy	227	(38)
Epilogue	265	(6)
Appendix	271	(4)
Notes	275	(82)
Archival and Other Primary Sources	357	(12)
Index	369