Paper Citizens and Biometrical Identification: Immigration, Nationality, and Belonging in Chinese America during the Exclusion Era

Abstract

There is perhaps no trope that has been mobilized as often in order to evoke a sense of national coherence as the trope of the nation-as- family. At first glance, this trope does not only seem omnipresent in nineteenth- (as well as twentieth-) century thought, it also seems to derive much of its appeal from its simplicity and conclusiveness.¹ The tropes representation of familial and national correspondences evokes a structure of concentric circles: It suggests that every individual belongs to a patriarchal nuclear family, which in turn is framed by the larger order of the nation. In this way, the concepts of family membership and national citizenship become tighdy connected by association. This logic of belonging has much to do with the fact that in nineteenth-century America “family was at times used as a synonym for race,” as Susan Ryan has pointed out (2000: 756; emphasis in the original). Of course, both terms, “family” and “race,” are correlated by their joint reliance on the conceptual repertory of biology: races, like families, are-to draw on the vocabulary of the day-of one blood.