Entry Denied: Controlling Sexuality At The Border

Initially targeting Chinese women, immigration control based on sexuality rapidly expanded to encompass every woman who sought entry to the United States. The particular cases Luibheid examines -- efforts to differentiate Chinese prostitutes from wives, the 1920s exclusion of Japanese wives to reduce the Japanese-American birthrate, the deportation of a Mexican woman on charges of lesbianism, the role of rape in mediating women's border crossings today -- challenge conventional accounts that attribute exclusion solely to prejudice or lack of information. This innovative work clearly links sexuality-based immigration exclusion to a dominant nationalism premised on sexual, gender, racial, and class hierarchies.