Forging a Nation Through Immigration Laws: Chinese and Japanese Immigration to the United States, 1870-1924.

Immigration laws and policies, like other nation- and state-building activities, have helped to determine the racialized character of the United States. This paper examines the interplay between race, gender, immigration, labor needs, and reproduction in nation-state building projects, illustrating processes of gender construction, racialization, and ethnic differentiation. I consider how notions of race and gender are used in aiding and abetting nation-building claims and projects. Specifically, I question why the United States banned nearly all Chinese immigrants with passage of the Page Law in 1875 and the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 though it permitted Japanese immigration, in particular Japanese wives, with the Gentlemen's Agreement of 1907 and 1908. Though the U.S. eventually excluded Japanese immigration in 1924, the differential treatment, albeit short, was hugely consequential. Whereas many Chinese were unable to form families and settle permanently, the Japanese did, which led to a sizable Japanese American community. Using archival evidence, I explain that geopolitics, competing tensions between labor needs and permanent settlement, along with state and national fears over miscegenation and desires to maintain the imputed racial purity of a 'white' national identity, led to differing responses. This research suggests that nation-building is not simply the 'imagining' of a community but is instead a negotiated process between geopolitics, economic development, politics of immigration, and cultural meanings of gender, race, and reproduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]