Migration and the Origins of American Citizenship

Migration and the Origins of American Citizenship presents a comprehensive analysis of how the logics of slavery and Native American dispossession influenced the development of U.S.

immigration policy and federalism.

The book traces the constitutional development and division of labor between national and state governments over migration control, examining why this arrangement lasted over a century, why it changed in the late nineteenth century, and what it meant for enslaved people, free Black Americans, Native Americans, and other migrants subject to these regimes of control.

By drawing together migration policy histories of groups usually studied separately and combining methodologies from political science, history, and law, Law reveals the unmistakable effects of slavery and Indigenous dispossession on modern U.S.

immigration policy.