This talk will explore the incorporation of Filipino immigrants in the United States during the first half of the twentieth century, focusing on the interplay of colonialism, racial boundaries and citizenship policy. The influx of Filipinos to the United States that followed the annexation of the Philippines confounded American authorities tasked with enforcing traditional racial checkpoints in American society. This talk will illustrate how the geo-political imperatives of U.S. imperial expansion repeatedly collided with domestic practices of racial exclusion forcing American policymakers to recalibrate the administrative boundaries of the national polity to address the status of colonial migrants. Contestation over the socio-legal status of Filipinos in the United States offers important insights into the contingent and contested nature of America’s ascriptive hierarchies and the interlocking politics of immigration, race and U.S. statecraft.

Rick Baldoz is an Assistant Professor in the Sociology Department at Oberlin College. He is the author of the award winning book, The Third Asiatic Invasion: Empire and Migration in Filipino America, 1898-1946 (NYU Press). He is currently working on a book project about the 1965 Hart Celler Immigration Act, examining this historical legislation against the backdrop of Cold War politics, anti-colonial upheaval, and domestic civil rights mobilization.