Migrants and Race in the US : Territorial Racism and the Alien/Outside

This book uses the concept of territorial racism to describe the discriminatory acts and exclusions that have been informed by native/alien distinctions. It argues that while the concept intersects with several different histories of racial and racist discourse, it is a distinct ideological formation in its own right. It is broader in scope than these other types of racism, and articulates race and territory in a way that is qualitatively different from the racial-territorial commonsense of the colonial era. Reflecting in policy trends, racial discourse, and macro-structural transformations, this book operates across all of these levels—looking at global/local and micro/macro dynamics—to present a new theory of immigrant racialization.

This book explains how migrants can be viewed as racial others, not just because they are nonwhite, but because they are racially "alien." This way of seeing makes it possible to distinguish migrants from a set of racial categories that are presumed to be indigenous to the nation. In the US, these indigenous racial categories are usually defined in terms of white and black. Kretsedemas explores how this kind of racialization puts migrants in a quandary, leading them to be simultaneously raced and situated outside of race.

Although the book focuses on the situation of migrants in the US, it builds on theories of migrants and race that extend beyond the US, and makes a point of criticizing nation-centered explanations of race and racism. These arguments point toward the emergence of a new field visibility that has transformed the racial meaning of nativity, migration and migrant ethnicity. It also situates these changing views of migrants in a broader historical perspective than prior theory, explaining how they have been shaped by a changing relationship between race and territory that has been unfolding for several hundred years, and which crystallizes in the late colonial era.