Migrants, rights, politics: Political agency in times of exclusion

Interweaving ancient conceptions of human mobility with the case of Chinese migration to the United States from the end of the nineteenth to the early twentieth century, this dissertation interrogates questions of political agency and rights via a study of migrants' opportunities to negotiate the realms of inclusion-exclusion, citizenship-alienship on both institutional and societal levels. I theorize migrants' ability to, on the one hand, subvert and re-interpret institutional control of movement and, on the other, generate symbols and identities that garner both institutional and community acceptance. I thus propose a framework for the study of migrants, state, and community interaction that goes beyond claims to citizenship and demands for rights and is premised on an understanding of migration as a social phenomenon that is not reducible to state categories of inclusion and belonging. In order to analyze migrants' interactions and influence on decisions and practices in relation to state policies, business interests, and consumer preferences, I rely on first-person accounts (diaries and oral histories), visual archive materials, congressional reports, and government documents.;By not 'settling' migrants into the discourse of (undocumented) migrants, I explore the possibilities for non-territorial political agency and one that is explicated through practices and means that allow migrants to gain access to restricted territories and maintain presence in otherwise unwelcoming communities. I argue that such practices are productive because they not only allow migrants to enact new identities and subvert meanings of state codifications, but also allow for the creation of new distinct categories and lead to a non-violent restructuring of both political institutions and the social imaginary. Against all odds, and despite various limitations, migrants' ability to contest legal restrictions and subvert the categories of citizenship and alienship is contingent upon their capacity to challenge and re-interpret the combined effects of institutional barriers and social opposition. In the process, they also form a distinctive (new) identity that is recognized on both the institutional and societal level.