2014/02/12 by Alison Bashford · 54 citations
Social Sciences · #Australian History and Society #Colonialism #Development economics #Economic history #Economics #Gender studies #Genealogy #History #Immigration #Immigration and crime #Immigration policy #Law #Legal and cultural studies analysis #Migration, Policy, and Dickens Studies #Political economy #Political science #Race (biology) #Sociology #State (computer science)
paper · doi:10.1017/s174002281300048x
published in Journal of Global History 9(1), 26-48 (Cambridge University Press)
openalex publication_date 2014/02/12 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
Abstract Immigration acts have long been analysed as instrumental to the working of the modern nation-state. A particular focus has been the racial exclusions and restrictions that were adopted by aspirationally white, new world nation-states: Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the United States. This article looks again at the long modern history of immigration restriction in order to connect the history of these settler-colonial race-based exclusions (much studied) with immigration restriction in postcolonial nation-states (little studied). It argues for the need to expand the scope of immigration restriction histories geographically, temporally and substantively: beyond the settler nation, beyond the Second World War, and beyond ‘race’. The article focuses on the Asia-Pacific region, bringing into a single analytical frame the early immigration laws of New Zealand, Australia, the United States, and Canada on the one hand and those of Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Fiji on the other.