Impossible Subjects

"Winner of the 2005 Lora Romero First Book Publication Prize, American Studies Association" "Winner of the 2005 Frederick Jackson Turner Award, Organization of American Historians" "Honorable Mention for the 2005 Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award, Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights" "Co-Winner of the 2004 History Book Award, Association for Asian American Studies" "Co-Winner of the 2004 First Book Prize, Berkshire Conference of Women Historians" "Winner of the 2004 Littleton-Griswold Prize, American Historical Association" "One of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 2004" "Winner of the 2004 Theodore Saloutos Book Award, Immigration and Ethnic History Society" Mae M. Ngai is professor of history and Lung Family Professor of Asian American Studies at Columbia University. Her books include The Lucky Ones: One Family and the Extraordinary Invention of Chinese America.
This book traces the origins of the "illegal alien" in American law and society, explaining why and how illegal migration became the central problem in U.S. immigration policy-a process that profoundly shaped ideas and practices about citizenship, race, and state authority in the twentieth century. Mae Ngai offers a close reading of the legal regime of restriction that commenced in the 1920s-its statutory architecture, judicial genealogies, administrative enforcement, differential treatment of European and non-European migrants, and long-term effects. She shows that immigration restriction, particularly national-origin and numerical quotas, remapped America both by creating new categories of racial difference and by emphasizing as never before the nation's contiguous land borders and their patrol.

Some images inside the book are unavailable due to digital copyright restrictions. "[A] deeply stimulating work. . . . Ngai's undeniable premise--as pertinent today as ever--is that the lawfully regulated part of our immigration system is only the tip of the iceberg. Even as we have allowed legal immigrants, mostly from Europe, through the front door, we have always permitted others, generally people of color, to slip in the back gate to do essential jobs."---Tamar Jacoby, Los Angeles Times Book Review "'Legal' and 'illegal,' as Ngai's book illustrates, are administrative constructions, always subject to change; they do not tell us anything about the desirability of the persons so constructed."---Louis Menand, New Yorker "Ngai pulls no punches, arguing that in most cases . . . illegal [immigrants] were stigmatized by negative racial stereotypes and branded as dangerous. . . . [I]t belongs in every library and should be referenced in every ethnic studies course." "May Impossible Subjects indeed lead to bold changes? Ngai creates that possibility, through altering our vision of immigration history, in showing us the constructed and contingent nature of its legal regulation. Impossible Subjects is essential reading."---Leti Volpp, Michigan Law Review "Ngai's book is a stunning piece of scholarship. . . . [F]or background reading of 'illegal immigration' that takes a broader view, this is an outstanding book."---David M. Reimers, International History Review "Ngai has produced a valuable reinterpretation of twentieth-century American immigration history, one that will push other scholars of race, immigration, and policy in new directions as well."---Charlotte Brooks, Journal of American History "Impossible Subjects offers an important contribution to U.S. histories of race, citizenship, and immigration. This stunning history of U.S. immigration policy dispels the liberal rhetoric that underlies popular notions of immigrant America, as it establishes the designation of Asians and Mexicans as perpetual racial others. Everyone in the field of race and immigration should read this thought provoking book."---Rhacel Salazar Parreñas, American Journal of Sociology "This superb book by historian Mae Ngai addresses the emergence of the le