Mass capture against memory

Chinese head tax certificates and the making of noncitizens

Bibliographic Data

ID4524729
AuthorsLily M Cho (York University, corresponding author)
Year2018
Volume22
Issue4
Pages381-400
Publication date2018-05-19
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueCitizenship Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1362-1025 • E-ISSN: 1469-3593
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/13621025.2018.1462505
OpenAlexW2806322003
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited28

This paper examines a complex bureaucratic process of remembering that was central to the Chinese head tax system in Canada known as C.I.9s (Chinese Immigration 9). The C.I.9s constitute the first mass use of identification photography in Canada. Unlike any moment in its prior history, the Canadian Government isolated one specific group of people, purely on the basis of race and ethnicity, in order to identify each individual member of that group through the creation of a massive apparatus that would systematically correlate their identity with a photographic image. This system was developed so that the government of Canada could remember these migrants in order to continue to exercise the processes of their exclusion from citizenship. Using the theoretical work of an early internet pioneer on surveillance, Philip Agre, and new media theorist, Wendy Chun, I suggest that the C.I.9s function as a technology of mass capture through which noncitizens are made

Aesthetics · Art · Bureaucracy · Citizenship · Immigration · Linguistics · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Law · Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration

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