The Qualities of a Citizen traces the application of U S immigration and naturalization law to women from the 1870s to the late 1960s Like no other book before it explores how racialized gendered and historical anxieties shaped our current understandings of the histories of immigrant women The book takes us from the first federal immigration restrictions against Asian prostitutes in the 1870s to the immigration reform measures of the late 1960s Throughout this period topics such as morality family marriage poverty and nationality structured historical debates over women s immigration and citizenship At the border women immigrants immigration officials social service providers and federal judges argued the grounds on which women would be included within the nation As interview transcripts and court documents reveal when where and how women were welcomed into the country depended on their racial status their roles in the family and their work skills Gender and race mattered The book emphasizes the comparative nature of racial ideologies in which the inclusion of one group often came with the exclusion of another It explores how U S officials insisted on the link between race and gender in understanding America s peculiar brand of nationalism It also serves as a social history of the law detailing women s experiences and strategies successes and failures to belong to the nation

The Qualities of a Citizen by Martha Gardner (2009-11-29) PDF

The list of books you might like