Bounding Mass Migration across the Atlantic: European Shipping Companies between US Border Building and Evasion (1860s–1920s)

Abstract

Bounding Mass Migration across the Atlantic: European Shipping Companies between US Border Building and Evasion (1860s–1920s)

This article questions the assumption that the rhetoric, laws and border controls to restrict immigration into the United States originated on the Pacific border to exclude Asians and were later transferred to the Atlantic border to limit European migration. To demonstrate that two separate immigration regimes had developed, I use the much-neglected perspective of passenger shipping companies as key actors in the development of border enforcement. As still relevant today, the authorities used transport companies as an integrated part of their border control system, yet at the same time this put them in a privileged position to help their clients pass or even evade controls. The article starts with contextualising the commercial interests behind maritime migrant transport and migration policies. It then analyses the implementation of border controls at the maritime front doors, and subsequently discusses how these had been evaded. Finally, this paper discusses how border controls had first spread from the US ports of entry to the northern and southern land borders and European hubs of departure, before finally consolidating into a frontier at the Mexican-American border, which divided the core from the periphery. I question the conception of a national border policy by clearly differentiating the Pacific and Atlantic border regimes, within which there were important local differences.