Title Defectives in the land : disability and immigration in the age of eugenics / Douglas C. Baynton

Published Chicago ; London : The University of Chicago Press, [2016] ©2016

Click on the following:
EBSCO eBooks

Copies

Description 1 online resource (177 pages) Contents Defective -- Handicapped -- Dependent -- Ugly Summary "Immigration history has largely focused on the restriction of immigrants by race and ethnicity, overlooking disability as a crucial factor in the crafting of the image of the "undesirable immigrant." Defectives in the Land, Douglas C. Baynton's groundbreaking new look at immigration and disability, aims to change this. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Baynton explains, immigration restriction in the United States was primarily intended to keep people with disabilities--known as "defectives"--Out of the country. The list of those included is long: the deaf, blind, epileptic, and mobility impaired; people with curved spines, hernias, flat or club feet, missing limbs, and short limbs; those unusually short or tall; people with intellectual or psychiatric disabilities; intersexuals; men of "poor physique" and men diagnosed with "feminism." Not only were disabled individuals excluded, but particular races and nationalities were also identified as undesirable based on their supposed susceptibility to mental, moral, and physical defects. In this transformative book, Baynton argues that early immigration laws were a cohesive whole--a decades-long effort to find an effective method of excluding people considered to be defective. This effort was one aspect of a national culture that was increasingly fixated on competition and efficiency, anxious about physical appearance and difference, and haunted by a fear of hereditary defect and the degeneration of the American race."--Publisher's description Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index Notes Print version record Subject Immigrants -- Medical examinations -- United States. Eugenics -- United States -- History People with disabilities -- Legal status, laws, etc. -- United States Disabled Persons -- history Emigrants and Immigrants -- history Emigration and Immigration -- legislation & jurisprudence Eugenics -- history Public Policy -- history History, 19th Century History, 20th Century BUSINESS & ECONOMICS -- Infrastructure. SOCIAL SCIENCE -- General. Emigration and immigration -- Government policy Eugenics Immigrants -- Medical examinations People with disabilities -- Legal status, laws, etc. SUBJECT United States -- Emigration and immigration -- Government policy United States https://id.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/D014481 Subject United States Genre/Form dissertations. History Academic theses. Thèses et écrits académiques. Form Electronic book ISBN 9780226364339 022636433X

  Permalink