The Maritime Origins of the Deportation Nation: Viapolitics of Unauthorized European Migration to the United States, 1819–1914

Torsten Feys, Flanders Marine Institute

During the peak of transatlantic migration in the early 1900s, US immigration authorities viewed shipping companies as both the cause and solution for undesirable migration. Using archives of a transatlantic shipping company, this article analyzes this pivotal role from a business perspective. It presents an overview of how federal laws regulating passenger transport and immigration integrated shipping companies as a key enforcement actor. In particular carrier sanctions, penalties designed to impose migration control upon transport companies, transferred responsibilities onto shipping lines to stem unauthorized migrants. In practice, this extended from preventing undesirables from boarding ships in Europe to be held accountable for those rejected at the gates and for returning undesirables ordered to be deported after entry. Yet shipping lines frequently contested their responsibilities in courts of law. They also indirectly undermined American enforcement practices by exploiting loopholes to evade immigration restrictions. This article therefore highlights the (dis)continuities of how authorities outsource mobility controls to carriers and refines our knowledge of how transport infrastructure affects migration governance. This discussion also examines the idea that unauthorized migration develops around transport networks and shows that carriers play a paradoxical role of helping state authorities to push back unauthorized migrants, even while it also provides loopholes for unauthorized migrants to enter anyways.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 118. Hidden Histories of Unauthorized European Immigration to the United States in the 20th Century