A new book by Department of History Associate Professor Benjamin Bryce, “Grounds for Exclusion: Race, Health, and Disability in Argentina, 1876-1932”, shows how mass inclusion and selective exclusion were two sides of the same coin.
While Argentina has been one of the most important destinations for international labour migrants in the modern world, a closer look at its history and policies reveals that the country’s doors were only open to certain people. Grounds for Exclusion shows how in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, officials developed a series of disqualifying features that prevented individuals from embarking on a ship for Argentina. Travellers who did go to Argentina were frequently barred at ports of entry on account of race, health, or disability.
Reviewers are calling Grounds for Exclusion a “truly remarkable multilanguage research that illuminates the international system of immigration restriction at work during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries”.
They have praised Prof. Bryce’s “careful attention to how state officials and their allies used race, national origin, and health to build a ‘system of exclusion'”.
The book challenges popular memory and is essential reading for anyone interested in understanding how immigration and restriction shaped modern Argentina.
