1.

Record Nr.

UNISA996248294303316

Autore

Gardner Martha

Titolo

The Qualities of a Citizen : Women, Immigration, and Citizenship, 1870-1965 / / Martha Gardner

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Princeton, NJ : , : Princeton University Press, , [2009]

©2005

ISBN

9786612157714

1-282-15771-X

1-4008-2657-8

Edizione

[Course Book]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (279 p.)

Classificazione

86.58

15.85

Disciplina

305.420973

325.73

325.73/082

Soggetti

Emigration and immigration law - United States - History

Social role - United States - History

Citizenship - United States - History

Women immigrants - Government policy - United States - History

United States Emigration and immigration Government policy History

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Front matter -- Contents -- In the Shadow of the Law -- PART I: Wives, Mothers, and Maids -- Chapter One. Immigrants, Citizens, and Marriage -- Chapter Two. The Limits of Derivative Citizenship -- Chapter Three. Seeing Difference -- Chapter Four. Constructing a Moral Border -- Chapter Five. Likely to Become -- Chapter Six. Toil and Trouble -- PART II: Citizens, Residents, and Non-Americans -- Chapter Seven. When Americans Are Not Citizens -- Chapter Eight. When Citizens Are Not White -- Chapter Nine. Reproducing the Nation -- Chapter Ten. Women in Need -- Chapter Eleven. At Work in the Nation -- PART III: Marriage, Family, and the Law -- Chapter Twelve. Families, Made in America -- Chapter Thirteen. Marriage and Morality -- Conclusion. Regulating Belonging -- A Brief Guide to Archival Sources



-- Acknowledgments -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

The Qualities of a Citizen traces the application of U.S. immigration and naturalization law to women from the 1870's to the late 1960's. 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 1870's to the immigration "reform" measures of the late 1960's. 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.