Here is a wise and provocative book for all who seek to understand why human migrants face increasing hostility, stricter restrictions, and intensifying border controls. Melancholy Order will be required reading for world historians of international migration, international law, and the impact of nationalism and racism on their intersection. Adam M. McKeown brilliantly synthesizes years of reading and research in archives on several continents, tracing the origins of today's debates to the erection of Chinese migration barriers by the liberal democracies of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. His analysis of the subsequent spread and expansion of restrictions provides a cautionary tale: there will be no easy answers to contemporary debates about migration.
Donna Gabaccia, professor of history and director, Immigration History Research Center, University of Minnesota Adam M. McKeown's provocative study clarifies how the regulation of migration was crucial to the development of modern conceptions of sovereignty and how Asian exclusion was the chief crucible from which relevant international identity documentation emerged in the late nineteenth century. Melancholy Order is a major contribution to a truly global understanding of the history of migration as well as a challenge to the typically ahistorical and Eurocentric conception of 'globalization.' Essential reading both for historians of migration and for those in the social sciences who want to make sense of what is (and isn't) really new in the contemporary period.
John Torpey, professor of sociology, CUNY Graduate Center An important new work in the field of transnational history and migration studies... Highly recommended. Choice An insightful and deeply engaged excavation of international methods of constraint and identification that have attained naturalized status today.
Madeline Yuan-Yin Hsu American Historical Review A highly important and invaluable contribution to the often US-centered perspectives concerning migration control and Chinese exclusion.
Barbara Luthi H-Soz-u-Kult [A] well-documented and closely argued intervention in global history, full of remarkable insights.
Evelyn Hu-DeHart Journal of American History Required reading for any scholar who is interested in the history of migration control.
Erika Lee Journal of Asian Studies In this book, McKeown demonstrates fully his broad readings and knowledge of works in this field.
Kwee Hui Kian Journal of World History