Melancholy Order: Asian Migration and the Globalization of Borders

Columbia Studies in International and Global History

by Adam M. McKeown

As Adam M. McKeown demonstrates, the push for increased border control and identity documentation is the continuation of more than 150 years of globalization. Not only are modern passports and national borders inseparable from the rise of global mobility, but they are also tied to the emergence of individuals and nations as the primary sites of global power and identity.

McKeown's detailed history traces how, rather than being a legacy of "traditional" forms of sovereignty, practices of border control historically rose from attempts to control Asian migration around the Pacific in the 1880s. New policies to control mobility had to be justified in the context of contemporary liberal ideas of freedom and mobility, generating principles that are taken for granted today, such as the belief that migration control is a sovereign right of receiving nations and that it should occur at a country's borders.

McKeown shows how the enforcement of these border controls required migrants to be extracted from social networks of identity and reconstructed as isolated individuals within centralized filing systems. Methods for excluding Asians from full participation in the "family of civilized nations" are now the norm between all nations. These practices also helped institutionalize global cultural and economic divisions, such as East/West and First and Third World designations, which continue to shape our understanding.

Genres: History, Politics

472 pages, Hardcover

First published December 15, 2008

Reviews

[Anh Le · Rating 5 out of 5]

This monograph is a riveting global history of migration control and the developmental trajectory of regulatory institutions that sought to consolidate their grips on boundary-crossing agents. In it, Mckeown makes a few key arguments that contribute to existing migration historiography. First, he avers that the nation-based model of regulating border migrations and its corresponding political technologies (to use Foucault’s term) such as fingerprinting, photo identification, cross-reference filing are products of historical developments that traced back to the 1880s and the mid-twentieth century as a critical epoch of white-settler nations dealing with Asian immigrants. The process arguably began with the exclusion of Asian migrations to the United States or Canada on the ground of a civilizational discourse rooted in the emergence of liberal/progressive governance. According to this logic, Asians were barred from entering the so-called enlightened, democratic countries because of their backwardness. However, this “white nativist” rhetoric occurred concomitantly with a competing narrative of globalization—the utility of interactions and commercial trade that empowered these “white” nations. Here, employing Foucault’s theorization of microphysical power and episteme, McKeown demonstrates that in order to reconcile with the inherent contradictions in their exclusionary rhetoric, white, progressive nations produced new forms of control that redefined legal and illegal subjects, targeting individual migrants through scientific, classificatory schemes to regulate migration flows. This model of control was later universalized and widely accepted, as nations growingly understood sovereignty on this term. The passports therefore not only represented but also produced individuals as unique objects for entry and revealed the power asymmetry with which notions of admissibility is based on an exclusionary (if not racist) discursive foundation. Second, McKeown was forceful in arguing that democratic, liberal governments created a global “melancholy order” in which the nation-states became the only legitimate parameters of marking individual identities and delineating borders. New migratory restrictions and legal requirements arose from the understandings that subjects only exist meaningfully once successfully cross-checked with migration data (produced based on the nation-based model). As McKeown puts it, “universal liberal ideals were no longer derived from the mere existence as a human, but from the existence of state institutions that could enforce them."

[Jiaxing · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book examines the development of migration control and the documentation of status, with particular focus on how the border became institutionalized as a critical site of governance. It argues that many foundational principles of contemporary border regimes were established through the management of Asian migration to white settler societies in the late nineteenth century.

The author demonstrates that liberatory language—such as appeals to self-determination and national sovereignty—was often appropriated to legitimize increasingly restrictive migration policies. Traditional migratory networks and informal forms of mobility were systematically dismantled and replaced with standardized categorizations, enabling sovereign states to exert greater authority over individual movement. The ideological framing of migration was cast in a civilizational narrative: a dichotomy between the "civilized" and the "uncivilized," repeatedly reinforced through legal and ceremonial practices that exposed the contradictions within liberal political ideals.

Crucially, the book challenges the common assumption that globalization erodes borders; rather, it contends that globalization interacts with, and even reinforces, borders. Drawing upon Michel Foucault’s concept of the microphysics of power, the book shows how border control institutions actively produce knowledge and shape individual identities, particularly through disciplines such as examination, enclosure, and standardization. Asians were excluded due to their ”authoritarian countries and backward nation“.

Special emphasis is placed on the processes of individualization and categorization, tracing how these practices varied across different colonies, administrative departments, and periods. Migration control was marked by significant disagreement among colonial officials, experts, and governments, reflecting the contingent and evolving nature of policy responses. Anxieties about "illegal migrants" and the volatility of migration flows led to continuous adaptation, often through the borrowing and modification of regulations between colonies. Yet migration governance remained plagued by bureaucratic inefficiency, jurisdictional conflicts, and breaches between departments, which were frequently cited as obstacles to effective control.

The book also argues for the close interrelationship between migration studies and postcolonial studies, highlighting how historical patterns of regulation, resistance, and classification continue to shape contemporary understandings of mobility, sovereignty, and identity.

[Melanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Globalization typically emphasizes connection/interaction/exchange. McKeown importantly draws attention to the other side of globalization coin: restriction and regulation. I can appreciate his work for that reason, but he does not center race as much as he should.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't finish this, because I was swamped with other books to read, but it was really interesting and I sort of regret putting it down. This is a different sort of global history than the others I was reading - globalization through differentiation, rather than "assimilation and convergence." McKeown's focus is on where our current system of border controls and assumptions about migration came from. We take for granted the idea that every nation gets total control over who it allows through its borders, and also that it is the right of people around the world to free mobility within the borders of their state. But where did this come from? Why do we think people have some natural inherent right to move around within nation-state borders but not necessarily across nation-state borders? How was this system of passports and border controls constructed?
McKeown argues that the rise of modern border controls and passports was not an organic shift. The growing international system of nation states did not produce this structure naturally, but rather it arose “out of attempts to exclude people from that system.” Essentially, modern border controls and passports were born out of a desire to define migrants from Asia as fundamentally different from migrants from Europe, and thus to exclude them from the white settler democracies like the USA and Australia. Ironically, these exclusions were not the product of some conservative, counterrevolutionary movement in these liberal democracies, but rather were conscious attempts to deny to Asians the identity of individual possessor of rights and liberties that Europeans had invented for themselves. Essentially, it was decided that "free migrants" had the right to immigrate to places like the USA, but China (for example) was not of the family of "civilized nations" so Chinese people could not be counted as "free" migrants. So they could be excluded.
A lot to think about in this book. Hopefully I can pick it up and read the rest at some point.

[John Jung · Rating 4 out of 5]

A valuable scholarly work that delves into the rationale and origins of border control methods such as the creation of "passports" and provides insights into the economic, political, and social aspects of border control with a focus on Asian immigrants.