ABSTRACT
The racial difference of the migrant is not just a matter of black and white. This deceptively simple statement lies at the heart of all of the arguments I’ve advanced in this book. But as I observe in Chapter 1, critical race scholars have been writing about the need to re-think the black/white binary for quite some time, so I haven’t tried to advance a completely new argument. I’ve taken an argument that’s already been explored in some depth and tried to draw it in some new directions. I’ve also tried to show that the analysis of native/alien distinctions can shed some new light on the workings of the black/white binary. This is why I begin the book by exploring the historical development of the US racial binary.
