Deportation in the Americas: Histories of Exclusion and Resistance

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

This valuable and timely volume considers the history of deportation in North America as a transnational phenomenon. Centered on the United States and Mexico in the first half of the twentieth century, it highlights the tension inherent in deportation as an exercise of national sovereignty that requires the cooperation of other countries and the involvement of nonstate and transnational actors, ultimately demonstrating the limits of state power. Deportation in the Americas emerged from the 2016 Walter Prescott Webb Memorial Lecture Series at the University of Texas at Arlington. Contributions by the participants Elliott Young, David C. LaFevor, Pablo Yankelevich, Kenyon Zimmer, and Natalia Molina are framed by Emily Pope-Obeda's winning entry in the Webb-Smith Essay Competition and an adaptation of Rachel Ida Buff's keynote address, which inverts Walter Prescott Webb's concept of the “sharp edge of sovereignty” to contend that American democracy is continually renewed through immigration, not expansion. An introduction by Donna R. Gabaccia situates the volume within the field of immigration history.