Unskilled Labor Migration and the Illegality Spiral: Chinese, European, and Mexican Indocumentados in the United States, 1882–2007

Abstract

This article explores the historical production of immigrant illegality in the United States as a set of interrelated yet distinct racial projects. The passage of nineteenth and twentieth century immigration legislation, which instituted requirements for immigrant identification, transformed unskilled labor movements from China and Europe into unauthorized or improperly documented immigration. This illegality was differently racialized. Excluded as a group, Chinese entrants became wholesale associated with illegality. In contrast, though it far surpassed the numbers of unauthorized entrants from China, European illegal movement was quickly forgotten. Unauthorized immigration from China and Europe were met with tightened immigration law and enforcement. Set in motion by the regulation of Chinese and European immigration, this “spiral of illegality” created the context for the transformation of Mexican laborers into indocumentados in the twentieth century and continues to shape the conditions under which twenty-first century immigrants arrive and live in the United States. While Mexican nationals have been the largest group to have arrived undocumented in the United States, today they constitute about half of the undocumented population, which hails from everywhere in the world, including nations in Asia and Europe. Recognition of such intersections among undocumented immigrant groups questions widespread assumptions about the existence of sharp distinctions between contemporary and historical immigration, and it also contributes to emerging forms of cross-ethnic activism for immigrant rights that complicate notions of indocumentados as nationals of one particular country.

Still a Nation of Immigrants? Effects of Constructions of National History on Attitudes toward Immigrants

“…Russians are considered to be one of the fastest growing immigrant communities since the 1990s and one of the largest European immigrant groups (American Communities Survey, 2011; cited in Pew Research Center, ). While many are highly educated and arrive as professionals, many others are undocumented (Sadowski‐Smith, ). As a White immigrant group, Russians presumably adapt relatively easily to life in the United States, yet studies also show that they experience discrimination from the host society (e.g., Birman, Trickett, & Buchanan, ).…”

Temporary Protection, Enduring Contradiction: The Contested and Contradictory Meanings of Temporary Immigration Status

“…However, the significance of this analysis does not end with the limits of temporary legal status programs, which account for a minimal number of migrants in comparison to legal permanent residency and unauthorized status. Elsewhere, scholars have argued for the significance of many other forms of liminal legality and qualified citizenship (see Ong ; Calavita ; Sadowski‐Smith ) and demonstrated that such graduated forms of alienation and citizenship resonate in the present neoliberal era (Motomura ; Kretsedemas ; Cacho ). Here, I argue that the ambiguities highlighted through a focus on liminal legality reveal dynamics and contradictions that pervade citizenship law—fundamental tensions in the way the state treats legal persons—which remain occluded in other legal forms.…”

“… 5 It is worth noting that Sadowski‐Smith (2009) suggests that, symbolically, scholarship on the subordination of migrants risks reifying these migrants’ identities as centered on hard work—with problematic racializing and essentializing implications. …”

Mexican Youth in Canada: A Political Economy Analysis of Motivations for Immigration, Labour Market Integration, and Transnational Practices

“…This labour also substituted jobs left open by decreasing numbers of European but mostly Asian immigrants between the late-1800s and the 1920s after the passage of various US migration exclusions (Sadowski-Smith 2008).…”