Cornell University Press Borderline Citizens: The United States, Puerto Rico, and the Politics of Colonial Migration (The United States in the World)

Borderline Citizens explores the intersection of U.S. colonial power and Puerto Rican migration. Robert C. McGreevey examines a series of confrontations in the early decades of the twentieth century between colonial migrants seeking work and citizenship in the metropole and various groups―employers, colonial officials, court officers, and labor leaders―policing the borders of the U.S. economy and polity. Borderline Citizens deftly shows the dynamic and contested meaning of American citizenship. At a time when colonial officials sought to limit citizenship through the definition of Puerto Rico as a U.S. territory, Puerto Ricans tested the boundaries of colonial law when they migrated to California, Arizona, New York, and other states on the mainland. The conflicts and legal challenges created when Puerto Ricans migrated to the U.S. mainland thus serve, McGreevey argues, as essential, if overlooked, evidence crucial to understanding U.S. empire and citizenship. McGreevey demonstrates the value of an imperial approach to the history of migration. Drawing attention to the legal claims migrants made on the mainland, he highlights the agency of Puerto Rican migrants and the efficacy of their efforts to find an economic, political, and legal home in the United States. At the same time, Borderline Citizens demonstrates how colonial institutions shaped migration streams through a series of changing colonial legal categories that tracked alongside corporate and government demands for labor mobility. McGreevey describes a history shaped as much by the force of U.S. power overseas as by the claims of colonial migrants within the United States. Review "Borderline Citizens is an excellent book on the early years of U.S. colonialism in Puerto Rico. Robert McGreevey builds his account around debates and legal conflicts produced as people began crossing from Puerto Rico into the states. McGreevey has made a terrific contribution to our understanding of the legal and conceptual frictions generated by colonialism in Puerto Rico." Author: Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof, University of Michigan, and author of Racial Migrations "Robert McGreevey offers original insights and deepens our understanding of the contours of U.S. citizenship, and the multi-layered nature of labor migration. Borderline Citizens brings together empire and migration, illustrates the complex and interconnected web of U.S. migration history, and depicts the continuing legacy of U.S. empire in the Caribbean well into the twentieth century in an effective manner. This is a compelling contribution to the literatures on U.S. empire, immigration history, legal history and labor history." Author: Mary Dudziak, Emory Law, and author of Cold War Civil Rights About the Author Robert C. McGreevey is Associate Professor of History at the College of New Jersey. He is the coauthor of Global America.