Science at the Borders
Immigrant Medical Inspection and the Shaping of the Modern Industrial Labor Force
Published on 30. July 2003
Book
Hardback
408 pages
978-0-8018-7080-4 (ISBN)
Description
In 1891, officers of the United States Public Health Service began examining immigrants at the nation's borders for "loathsome and dangerous contagious diseases." First introduced as a means to screen out those who posed a threat to public health, the examinations were soon described by officials as a way of denying entry to applicants who could not work and would, therefore, be a burden on society. But historian Amy Fairchild has unearthed a curious fact about this ubiquitous rite of immigration-it was rarely undertaken to exclude immigrants. In Science at the Borders, Fairchild retells the immigrant story, offering a new interpretation of the medical exam and the role it played in the lives of the 25 million immigrants who entered the US. She argues that the vast assembly line of flesh and bone served as a kind of initiation into the life of the new working class, one that would introduce men and women from the villages of eastern Europe and elsewhere to the norms and conventions of the factory floor.
What the overwhelming majority of immigrants endured at Ellis Island and other entry points to the United States was, according to Fairchild, part of a process of induction into American industrial society. Against this backdrop Fairchild also explores the southern border of the United States and the West Coast where the exam did, in fact, serve to exclude. Throughout, Fairchild conveys the humanity of the story, offering detailed accounts of individual immigrants confronting a large scientific and medical bureaucracy.
What the overwhelming majority of immigrants endured at Ellis Island and other entry points to the United States was, according to Fairchild, part of a process of induction into American industrial society. Against this backdrop Fairchild also explores the southern border of the United States and the West Coast where the exam did, in fact, serve to exclude. Throughout, Fairchild conveys the humanity of the story, offering detailed accounts of individual immigrants confronting a large scientific and medical bureaucracy.
Reviews / Votes
Her weaving of both [narratives and statistical data] is deft, and her analysis of the numerical data is superb... A touchstone for anyone doing work in either the histories of immigration or public health. An outstanding book, strongly recommended. Choice 2004 The unique contribution of this monograph is the painstaking effort the author has made to set the medical inspections within their historical context. -- Antonio Ugalde Nature Medicine This book should have wide appeal to historians of all specialties, but historians of medicine, labor, and immigration will find it a particularly useful addition to their libraries. -- Cynthia A. Connolly, Ph.D., RN Nursing History Review 2004 The study is extraordinarily well-documented and it is concisely written. It is a thoughtful discussion of a crucial period in the development of the American labor force and the effort of immigration policy to influence its composition when the level of immigration itself was uncontrolled. -- Vernon M. Briggs, Jr. Industrial and Labor Relations Review 2004 This well-written and accessible volume adds considerably to current understandings of the relationship between the industrial, medical, and political agendas that shaped immigrant medical inspections in the first third of the twentieth century. Medical History Through detailed analysis of numbers, combined originally with Foucaultian theory, Fairchild traces changes in the immigrant medical examination to make nuanced and sophisticated arguments... Fairchild's material and analysis make novel and important contributions to immigration history. -- Georgina Feldberg Journal of American History 2004 What this book does really well is explain through the lens of immigrant medical inspections how a governmental bureaucracy employed physicians to enact rituals of inclusion as well as exclusion... Science at the Borders is well written, highly readable, and largely persuasive... Fairchild has done a great deal of statistical work here, and, to her credit, she presents her readers with good reason to care about the numbers. -- Stephen Pemberton Medical Humanities Review 2003 A scholarly effort to reconstruct the multiple purposes of medical inspections of immigrants between 1892 and 1930, when over 25 million people arrived at the US borders. The unique contribution of this monograph is the painstaking effort the author has made to set the medical inspections within their historical context... It is vastly more valuable than a historical description of facts and events. -- Antonio Ugalde Nature Medicine 2004 A major contribution of this book is that Fairchild has assembled an extraordinarily useful set of data from official sources. -- Robert Barde Journal of American Ethnic History 2004 Like the best recent works in American immigration history, Science at the Borders combines rich historical detail with a broad and integrative approach to illuminate multiple aspects of life in early twentieth-century America. Journal of Social History 2005 The book is an original contribution to the growing scholarship on the interwoven histories of U.S. immigration and public health. -- Catherine Ceniza Choy American Historical Review 2005More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Baltimore, MD
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
15 s/w Photographien bzw. Rasterbilder, 17 s/w Zeichnungen
17 Line drawings, black and white; 15 Halftones, black and white
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 33 mm
Weight
680 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-8018-7080-4 (9780801870804)
DOI
10.56021/9780801870804
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Amy Fairchild is an assistant professor and assistant director for academic and scholarly activities at the Center for the History and Ethics of Public Health in the department of sociomedical sciences at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health.
Content
Contents:Acknowledgments List of AbbreviationsIntroduction. Immigration by the Numbers: Rethinking the Immigrant Medical ExperiencePart I. Numbers Large: Immigrant Medical Inspection as an Inclusionary Tool One. Immigrants and the New Industrial Economy Two. The Function of Medical Inspection: Restriction, Instruction, and Discipline of the Laboring Body Three. The Medical Gaze: Science in Industrial-Era AmericaPart II. Numbers Small: Immigrant Medical Inspection as an Exclusionary Tool Four. The Shape of the Line: Immigrant Medical Inspection from Coast to Coast Five. At the Borders of Science: Diagnostic Technology at the Intersection of Race, Class, Disease, and Industrial Citizenship Six. Drawing the Color Line: Radical Patterns of Medical Certification and ExclusionEpilogue. The End of the Line: Immigrant Medical Inspection after 1924Appendix. Note on Data Collection, Cleaning, Coding, and Analysis Notes Index