Where's your bloody pigtail?: Liberalism, Empire, and the Chinese Labour Question

Professor Glover outlined the moral panic around aliens and Chinese labour in the 1906 election, relating the debate to the 1905 Aliens Act and to Chinese indentured layout to South Africa. Migration scholars and NGOs have often sought to disassociate popular associations between criminality and immigration: migrants are not criminals, nor are they necessarily more likely to commit crime. But this risks ignoring important relationships between immigration and criminality, both 'immigrant' and 'criminal' for example, are set in opposition to the (good) citizen, both are important administrative categories for states, and comprise groups upon whom the state can exercise significant degrees of coercion. Both are highly racialised. There are also historical continuities: mobility has long been associated with criminality, through vagabondage and the problem of 'masterless men', gypsies and Roma, and 'illegal immigrants'. Both groups can share social and political disabilities - in the US former prisoners are not eligible for further education grants, cannot access welfare payments or food stamps, and in 10 states, are denied the right to vote for life. This seminar series will interrogate the relation between immigration, criminality and citizenship, by exploring these issues.