Bounding mass migration across the Atlantic : European shipping companies between U.S. border building and evasion 1860s-1920s

This article questions the assumption that the rhetoric, laws and border controls to restrict immigration into the United States originated on the Pacific border to exclude Asians and were later transferred to the Atlantic border to limit European migration. To demonstrate that two separate immigration regimes developed, I use the much neglected perspective of passenger shipping companies as key actors in the development of border enforcement. As still today, authorities used transport companies as an integrated part of their border control system, yet at the same time this put them in a privileged position to help their clients pass or even evade controls. The article starts with contextualiszing the commercial interests behind maritime migrant transport and migration policies. It then analyzes the implementation of border controls at the maritime front doors, and subsequently discusses how these were evaded. Finally, it discusses how border controls spread from US ports of entry to its northern and southern land borders, European hubs of departure and to finally consolidate into a frontier at the Mexican-American border dividing the core from the periphery. I question the conception of a national border policy by clearly differentiating Pacific and Atlantic border regimes within which there were important local differences