Week 1: Migration, Mobility & Borders: Reading Response

Allison Brown HIST 5400: Migration, Mobility & Borders Dr. Hampton August 31, 2022 Reading Response - Week 1 Welke’s Law and the Borders of Belonging in the Long Nineteenth Century United States(2010) centers around the “borders and belonging” and primarily how citizenship and “belonging” is determined by constructions of ableness, gender, and race which are institutionalized in legal systems. Welke describes the borders of belonging to be a vehicle for discussing the legal and societal impacts in terms of shared commonalities to address both the physical belonging and that of individuals or personhood in a society.1 Welke acknowledges that the borders of belonging are defined by ableness, gender, and race 2 with religion, class, and age influencing belonging but not being the primary drivers of belonging. To start, the impacts of law in particularizing the construction of ableness, race, and gender in constructing borders cannot be understated. Welke’s argument establishes that each sphere of “capacity” reinforced one another in the assignment of legal significance to an identifying factor as “the legal 3 disability attached to the characteristic must be denaturalized and historized.” By acknowledging the legal authority which statutes and the law holds in the borders of belonging, readers are able to recognize how the law in these spheres operates both in inclusionary and exclusionary to shape the norms of society.4 Ultimately, Welke argues, the law was controlled from early in the nineteenth century by abled, white, men as “the mobilization of law in defense of the able white male republic in the nineteenth 5 century fostered a culture of identity politics.” In addition to the numerous drawbacks this legal 6 representation presented in US Supreme Court decisions such as Lessee v. McIntosh or Buck v. Bell7, 1 Barbara Young Welke, Law and the Borders of Belonging in the Long Nineteenth Century United States (Cambridge University Press, 2010). pg. 4 2 pgs. 11, 15 3 pg. 2 4 pg. 17 5 pgs. 42, 141 6 pg. 52 7 pgs. 59-60 Welke weights the benefits it presented for said population “... universal white male suffrage not only cast white men as a group as lawmakers, but also thereby bridged fundamental economic inequalities that 8 otherwise might have divided men.” As Welke describes prior to this statement, economics, or class are not one of the categories in which defines the borders of belonging. However, in this example it is evident that economics did influence the borders of belonging in terms of which abled, white, men were able to participate in the state. Economically, Welke refers to the argument of Chirstopher Tomlins in that “ by 9 law and lived experience” that all citizens fall into an “asymmetrical realm of masters and servants.” In this sense, it seems Tomlins is referring to the role in which capitalism and the liberal order in the nineteenth century held in determining personhood and belonging more broadly. Critical to determine who is involved in the borders of belonging, or more aptly who is not, is citizenship. Referring to the founding framers and the development of citizenship in the US, Welke argues that the nation, and citizenship, was imagined strictly in able, racialized, and gendered labels and 10 that “... able white men alone were fully embodied legal persons … they were the nation.” With this context in mind, and how citizenship is impacted by the law (and the inverse), this presents how citizenship could be utilized as an extension of that legal and governing ability given to the few as “ an 11 instrument of authority or subordination.” In addition to using citizenship as a tool to disclude, it could also be used as an incentive, given the protections and assurance citizenship could offer in regard to 12 belonging. The Federal Militia Act of 1972 denoted “free able-bodied white males citizens” as fit for military service, inherently exclusionary to these deemed “inept” due to physical or mental disability. However, for immigrants military service proved to be a fast track to the protections of citizenship for 13 themselves and their family with the government additionally providing land in addition to citizenship. This example of the citizenship being incentivized is indicative of Welke’s argument that the borders of belonging could both be “charged negatively or positively … in which belonging for some is 8 pg. 122 9 pg. 111 10 pg. 2 11pgs. 4, 31 12 pg. 35 13 pg. 36 14 achieved through the subordination or exclusion of others.” To this, Welke argues that the expansion of the borders of belonging offer a “progressive, liberal” future in which as the “borders of belonging 15 expand, those outside are brought inside.” Although these notions of the borders of belonging expanding are optimistic in terms of a progressive state, I disagree that the inclusion of those in the borders would be so simple. Throughout her argument, Welke’s established the primary barriers to inclusion for people on the margins are purposeful legal barriers which exist. Widening the borders of belonging, staying true to her argument, would require a shift away from industrial capitalism as “nineteenth century debates about corporate capital and its personhood … were pitched in the language of 16 liberalism and its inclusions and exclusions.” The borders of belonging and their impacts on society 17 cannot be distinct from the roles in which legal systems shape inclusion. Discussion Questions 14 pg. 5 15 pg. 6 16 pg. 146 17 pg. 132 ● Welke writes, “We are less accustomed to thinking of ability and disability as equally critical historically in shaping privilege and subordination. I argue here that ability, no less than race and gender, was fundamental to personhood and citizenship” (pg. 6). → Why have historians in the past not considered ability/disability in terms of citizenship and the borders of belonging? Or have they? ● Why did Welke not include religion as one of the three main determinants of the borders of belonging? ● As Welke describes repeatedly throughout the text, from the founding framers to the law, upholding able, white, male privilege was paramount to the structures which existed. Do you think that as the “borders of belonging expand, those outside are brought inside” (pg. 146)? Or are the borders of belonging unable to expand in terms of citizenship given institutionalized restrictions and understandings which are reinforced by social norms?