This book reconceptualizes the history of U.S. immigration and citizenship law from the colonial period to the beginning of the twenty-first century by joining the histories of immigrants to those of Native Americans, African Americans, Asian Americans, Latino/a Americans, women, and the poor. Kunal Parker argues that during the earliest stages of American history, being legally constructed as a foreigner, along with being subjected to restrictions on presence and movement, was not confined to those who sought to enter the country from the outside, but was also used against those on the inside. Insiders thus shared important legal disabilities with outsiders. The book advances new ways of understanding the relationship between foreignness and subordination over the long span of American history.
Kunal Parker is Professor of Law and Dean’s Distinguished Scholar at the University of Miami. He has held fellowships at New York University Law School, Cornell Law School, Queens University in Belfast, Ireland, and the American Bar Foundation in Chicago, Illinois. Prior to entering the teaching profession, Professor Parker worked as an associate at the New York law firm of Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton. His first book, Common Law, History, and Democracy in America, 1790–1900: Legal Thought before Modernism was published by Cambridge University Press in 2011. His teaching areas and interests include American legal history, estates and trusts, immigration and nationality law, and property.
