Culling the Masses

The Democratic Origins of Racist Immigration Policy in the Americas

Bibliographic Data

ID2789453
AuthorsG Reginald Daniel (0000-0001-7014-0189, corresponding author)
Year2015
Volume95
Issue4
Pages719-721
Publication date2015-11-01
Open AccessNo
TypeREVIEW
Review ofCulling the Masses: The Democratic Origins of Racist Immigration Policy in the Americas, David Scott Fitzgerald, 2014
VenueHispanic American Historical Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0018-2168 • E-ISSN: 1527-1900
PublisherDuke University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1215/00182168-3161796
OpenAlexW2769003472
LanguageEN

There have been numerous studies of race and immigration as well as nation formation in the Americas. None has so masterfully integrated these topics as does Culling the Masses: The Democratic Origins of Racist Immigration Policy in the Americas. It is the first comprehensive comparative historical analysis of race and national origin in terms of exclusionary immigration policies in the Americas. David Scott FitzGerald and David Cook-Martín observe various transregional “patterned regularities” in immigration policies through three dimensions of analysis (p. 30). The first examines historical processes. The second explores organizations, class interests, and racist ideology. The third focuses on the international system, global ecology, and policy diffusion.The authors have compiled an impressive database from government archives, legislative debates, and secondary sources on immigration laws in 22 nations in the Americas from 1790 to 2010. This is supplemented with data on the motivations and social sources behind the implementation and interpretation of immigration statutes in the United States, Canada, Cuba, Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina. Culling the Masses brings into focus the criteria used to determine immigrants' suitability for entry to and eligibility for citizenship in various nations. In the first decades of the twentieth century, immigration policies were heavily influenced by eugenics, whereby nations sought to promote specific desirable traits and inhibit those deemed undesirable. Immigrant selection standards have frequently been based on explicit references to racial and ethnic features and perceived behavior. At other times, these biases have been implicit, with professional, health, educational, and other criteria having been more strictly applied to some groups than others. This has served as a means of racial and ethnic profiling by subterfuge, even if the laws themselves have been prima facie racially and ethnically neutral. In either case, these measures have privileged some groups with “positive preferences” while penalizing others with “negative discrimination.”That said, the conventional wisdom has historically been that notions of racial “superiority” and “inferiority” are irreconcilable with liberal democracy, which necessarily supports public policies governed by the principles of diversity and equality. Following this line of reasoning, the immigration policies of democratic societies would be more inclined toward universalism and inclusiveness. FitzGerald and Cook-Martín marshal empirical evidence that refutes that assumption by underscoring the long-standing relationship between racism, immigration policies, and liberal democracies. They argue that racist immigration policy has not simply been a fleeting aberration but rather a normative, if contradictory, part of democracy.Moreover, democratic regimes in the Americas were the first to profile immigrants based on race and national origin. The United States, for example, led the way in using legal means to exclude “inferior” racial and ethnic groups in its nationality laws of 1790 and immigration laws of 1803. Conversely, authoritarian regimes in Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Cuba, and Argentina overturned their discriminatory laws in the 1930s and 1940s, decades before the United States and Canada annulled theirs in the 1960s. The authors are careful, however, not to establish a linear relationship between racial discrimination and liberal democracy. Borrowing Max Weber's concept of “elective affinity,” they describe this relationship as “nondeterministic and probabilistic,” “involv[ing] choices by those it links” (p. 7). Although liberalism has had a greater affinity with racial and ethnic selectivity than with universalism, FitzGerald and Cook-Martín maintain that there is no ironclad connection. They conclude that liberal democracy or authoritarianism are neither inherently racist nor antiracist but are contingent upon the nature of public policies that are formulated, implemented, and maintained in particular societies.Ultimately, FitzGerald and Cook-Martín argue that changes in World War II and Cold War racial geopolitics, rather than altruistic and humanitarian concerns, impelled liberal democracies such as the United States and Canada to reform their racist immigration and citizenship laws. The authors attribute this to the fact that developing nations in Asia, Latin America, and, eventually, Africa were judicious in utilizing international organizations and forums such as the League of Nations, the United Nations, the International Labour Organization, the Pan-American Union, the Organization of American States, the Inter-American Demographic Congress, and the Bandung Conference, among other bodies, to challenge and ultimately inform the public policies of more powerful nations. Accordingly, “race relations become international relations” (p. 69). Culling the Masses is thus a penetrating examination of the complexities of and “strategic adjustment” in a world system where the geopolitics between “core” and “periphery” have been inextricably linked in the production of immigration policies in the Americas (p. 49).Culling the Masses is a timely and groundbreaking contribution to scholarship on comparative immigration and immigration policy and their role in nation making in terms of race and ethnicity. It is crucial reading for students and scholars interested in the history and politics of immigration policy in the Americas. Furthermore, politicians, policymakers, and the general public alike would benefit from reading the text given its relevance to contemporary debates on immigration

Citizenship · Democracy · Development economics · Economics · Eugenics · Immigration · Immigration law · Immigration policy · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Statute · Latin American and Latino Studies · Law · Politics and Society in Latin America · Race, History, and American Society

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