Insanity on the move: the “alien insane” in modern America, 1882-1930

This dissertation examines the “alien insane” and their place in modern America between 1882 and 1930. It makes original contributions using the “alien insane”—allegedly insane immigrants, who were at once objects of medical surveillance and candidates of deportation, hospital commitment, and citizenship—as an analytical tool to examine how “insanity,” a diagnostic category, became understood as a bureaucratic and racial construction. It also sheds light on the contested interpretations of insanity, the development of American immigration policy and federal powers, and the involvement of state and medical bureaucracies in defining American citizenship. The “alien insane” were deeply implicated in the Progressive discourses of civilization and mobility. Analysis of the discourses explains why and how immigration came to be associated with insanity at this particular moment in American history when the field of psychiatry was professionalized and the public anxiety over new immigration grew. In addition to drawing the line between civilized and settling Europeans and uncivilized and sojourning Asians, these discourses revealed the contemporary racial ideology and gave a new meaning to immigrants’ mobility, which has been taken for granted in immigration studies. Through the “alien insane,” federal, state, and international governments as well as immigration officials, state hospital doctors, social workers, steamship companies, and immigrant communities joined to define “normal” behavior and worthy citizenship. Unlike other deportees, the “alien insane” required costly institutionalization and humanitarian attention; thus, their reception and care raised questions on the definition of citizenship for immigrants and for American citizens abroad, themselves subject to deportation by foreign states upon leaving their homeland. Moving beyond the immigration stations where historians most commonly encounter immigrant subjects, this study employs neglected and previously unavailable sources, including immigrant patient files of state mental hospitals, to investigate racialization and institutionalization of the “alien insane.” Narratives by American authors and by immigrants also help reexamine immigrants’ perspectives of insanity, assimilation, and American life. This study is about the “alien insane,” but it is also about the work they performed for American culture, for immigration policy, and for both sending and receiving countries to set national boundaries and define good citizens.Ph. D.Includes bibliographical referencesby Ji-Hye Shi