Immigrant authors in the United States write under the shadow of hostile laws that challenge expectations of political equality and belonging. Tales of repudiation and resistance mark the uncertainties of transit and the dangers of arrival. This study of Asian American texts exposes how US immigration laws naturalize race and redefine identities and lineage. Immigration law transformed American narrative forms to create a global and intercultural literature in which Asian migrants refuse to be turned into perpetual outsiders.

States’ attempts to translate the messy realities of revolutionary-era coerced mobilities into orderly categories of law were met with efforts to define legal statuses by those forcibly removed. Focusing on revolutionary-era political refugees, the chapter shows how governments’ responses led to a proliferation of so-called alien laws across the Americas and Europe and how, despite their seemingly universal and neutral character, these laws reflected the ambiguous status and multiple mobilities during this period. As can be seen in a major legal battle involving a family of refugees of Haitian origin in Jamaica, the regulation of alien status had long-standing ramifications during a period in which the terms of political membership and state belonging were in full transformation across the Atlantic world. Both in mundane administrative interactions and legal battles, refugees engaged with the law and sought to shape and negotiate their status. In doing so, they could also rely on “vernacular” uses in other relevant branches of the law, such as legal distinctions governing freedom and slavery. As with freedom, belonging was not just granted or asserted by state authorities but could also be claimed and recrafted by those who sought it.

Union citizenship was created to provide a closer bond between the European Union and the nationals of the Member States. It provides a frame for rights to move and reside throughout the EU, and to work and live in conditions of equality and non-discrimination within a host Member State. Union citizens also have the right to be accompanied by their families when they move, even if the family members are not Union citizens themselves. The very power and scope of these rights can make them controversial. The question of whether and when Union citizens should have access to benefits, whether their same-sex family arrangements should be recognised in Member States that do not allow same-sex marriage themselves, and the extent to which Member State nationality law is constrained by the fact that each Member States national is also a Union Citizen, have all been the subject of much discussed case law.

This chapter details the cracks in the consensus that began to emerge as tension boiled over in France with the expulsion of the PCF from the governing coalition and the communist-directed strikes that paralyzed the nation at the end of the year. Italian, Spanish and French intelligence, US embassy officials in Paris, U.S. military intelligence, and Central Intelligence Group current intelligence reports kept up the drumbeat, warning of growing anti-Americanism, communist power grabs and the PCF’s role in a larger, global communist conspiracy. Their analysis formed the core of the intelligence sent to President Truman and his senior advisors. However darkly uniform the analysis of the preceding year had been, some French officials, experts in the Office of Intelligence and Research (OIR) and a few mid-level analysts in the CIA expressed growing concern about the type and quality of intelligence. OIR analysts who complained that some CIA officials failed to account for French agency raised one of the most serious shortcomings of American analysis. Beyond their entreaties for American aid, French sources also played a role in the development of U.S. interference in France and its pro-colonial turn.

The jus temporis that is argued for in this chapter aims to explicate the value of human time that is to be found in the finite, irreversible, and unstoppable character of human time. To make the value of human time explicit, "rootedness" and "integration" are conceptually distinguished. The latter signifying qualified time, the former mere lapse of human time. Rootedness simply signifies the entanglement of presence on a territory with the lapse of finite and irreversible human time. This conception of rootedness is at the heart of jus temporis and its implications are not limited to questions of citizenship acquisition. It is argued that the value of rootedness equally applies to waiting time in procedures, endless forms of temporariness, and unlawful residence. Concretely, it is argued that this jus temporis implies two elements. The first is a certain openness to the future, the possibility that a certain situation will not last forever. The second element is that there should be end-terms at work in law: procedures may not last forever, temporariness may not continue eternally, and there should be a moment when long-term unlawful residences can become lawful.

The National Socialist period was the central formative experience for Romanian Germans, and their identity debates were refracted through the legacy of National Socialism and the Second World War. This chapter charts the origins of these debates in the interwar period, places them in their respective contexts of Cold War Romania and West Germany, and explores the reverberations of these debates in post-Communist Europe. The circle around the Romanian German literary magazine Klingsor in the 1920s and 1930s rehearsed many of the arguments that were to occupy the Romanian German émigré public in the 1970s and 1980s. If the Klingsor writers were part of an interwar European right-wing ‘youth’ movement, then the same ‘old men’ of the 1970s and 1980s formed the vanguard to a turbulent revisionist decade over the fascist past. Far from being a parochial debate about a marginal group, the Romanian German memory wars and ‘little historians’ dispute’ of the 1980s reflect a European and transnational process of making sense of European fascism, war, and expulsions.

Access of non-EU nationals to the labour market of EU Member States is based on selection matching skills needs. EU nationals have a right under EU law to reside in other EU Member States on condition that they either are student or economically active, or do have ‘sufficient resources’. This chapter examines whether the differences in framework are also visible on the ground. It looks at the changing practice of monitoring ‘sufficient resources’. During the economic crisis, several Member States increased the threshold for ‘sufficient resources’ and introduced stricter enforcement of the financial conditions. At the same time, the percentage of flexible and temporary labour contracts on the labour market increased, making it harder to fulfil these financial conditions. This chapter analyses how the combination of stricter rules, economic crisis, and flexible contracts may impact on termination of residence of, presumably, less wealthy EU citizens. It argues that the distinction made at EU level between intra-EU mobility and labour migration from outside the EU is not an appropriate starting point to look at the complexities of movement of workers in and to the EU.

This chapter retraces the appeal made by Ho Chi Minh's legal team to the Privy Council in London in an attempt to cancel a Hong Kong Governor-in-Council order to return him to a French jurisdiction. Drawing upon British and French documentation, the chapter explains the out-of-court settlement in his favor but also intramural government maneuverings and even incompetence in the handling of his case: Ho Chi Minh's thwarted attempt to reach England, an aborted trip to Singapore and, with local Hong Kong legal assistance, his anticlimactic final departure from Hong Kong to Shanghai. A range of documentation is brought to bear upon, for example, faux reports of Ho Chi Minh's death, his journey to Moscow and communist recriminations over his Hong Kong interlude.

The Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (AFSJ) should enable citizens to travel, work and live anywhere in the EU safely and protected by the rule of law. This chapter discusses that claim by highlighting the interaction between free movement and non-discrimination rights of EU citizens on the one hand and specific AFSJ measures on immigration and criminal and civil matters on the other. It shows that the law has not evolved unidirectionally and that the interpretation of the objective of the AFSJ is unpredictable. At times, the law goes in the opposite direction to fostering free movement and is not in line with the fundamental nature of both EU citizenship and free movement rights.

Chapter 3 examines the development of the first Palestinian curriculum in the aftermath of the establishment of the first Palestinian Ministry of Education in 1994. A close reading of Palestinian educational plans’ content and the elucidation provided by officials reveals that the incorporation of the 1948 War and its catastrophic effects on Palestinian society – highlighted in the continual usage of the term al-Nakba – were considered crucial to furthering national identification and a historical consciousness among Palestinians. Nevertheless, this chapter reveals that the conservative educational outlooks favored by the Palestinian Ministry of Education coupled with the influence of Israeli lobbying efforts led to the production of educational content that lacks an in-depth historical analysis of the 1948 War and the mass displacement that ensued. Notwithstanding the existence of a tepid Nakba narrative, the latter part of this chapter illustrates that the Nakba’s societal significance can be found in the overt and intentional omission of the Holocaust in the Palestinian curriculum. Reactionary educational policies in the domestic sphere are deemed a materialization of Zygmunt Bauman’s victimhood politicization – a quid pro quo, which, as a result of Israeli educational and societal treatment of the Nakba, brings about a retributive omission of “their narrative.”

Britain was home to international commodity markets in London and Liverpool in the nineteenth and first part of the twentieth centuries. There was a rising volume of international trade as Britain became the first industrial nation, a major importer of these commodities for its own needs, an entrepȏt, and a centre for organising distribution elsewhere. The London and Liverpool markets facilitated distribution through time with forward dealings. Futures contracts went a step further: actual delivery was not contemplated, and trades were settled by paying price differences. The markets and the trade associations whose members worked in them engaged in private law-making - the way that the markets were constituted and governed; the controls over those using them; the system of rules for transactions on them and how these were cleared and settled; the standard form contracts used for dealings; and the arbitration procedures for dispute settlement. State law intervened in only the most egregious cases of market abuse attracting public condemnation and threatening confidence. Until the twentieth century, lawyers were not regularly engaged in formulating the rules and contracts of the London and Liverpool commodity markets or in advising on how disputes were to be settled or arbitrated.

This chapter continues the exploration of the gap between legal theories on the conduct of war and enemy aliens on the one hand and the practice of states at war on the other. It focuses first of all on the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871 that anticipated the mobilization of the nation-in-arms and examines, in particular, the expulsion of "Germans" from Paris and Strasbourg in the summer of 1870, the consequences of the expulsion and the lively debate among international lawyers it sparked. The chapter continues with an analysis of the Russo-Ottoman War of 1877–1878, concentrating on the emergence of a humanitarian discourse in order to legitimize intervention. Then it moves east to take into consideration the treatment of enemy aliens and the accompanying discourses on civilization in the Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895) and in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905. This chapter also delves into the novelties that occurred in the field of international law and international relations with the signing of the Geneva Convention, the foundation of the Institute of International Law in Brussels, the two Conferences at The Hague in 1899 and 1907. The final part of the chapter concentrates on the Balkan conflicts of 1912–1913 and the atrocities against civilians.

This chapter explores the different levels of ‘legal otherness’ in European Union law in the context of expulsion and entry bans. It is based on the premise that deportability constitutes a clear indicator of 'otherness' and that the lack of a secure residence status marks an individual as an outsider. This contribution examines the impact of a foreigner’s nationality and the duration of her or his residence in the ‘host’ Member State on the level of ‘legal otherness’ as it emanates from the person’s protection against expulsion. The different levels of 'otherness' are analysed against the background of the rationale that a secure residence status has an inclusive effect and is conducive to the foreigner’s integration. A low level of protection against expulsion and an insecure residence status, by contrast, have exclusionary effects and are capable of hampering the foreigner’s integration into the society of the ‘host’ Member State.

This chapter concentrates on the early months of the war, and delving into autobiographical testimonies looks more closely at the suffering and fate of enemy aliens. The chapter then describes the implementation of the policies adopted in the early months and deals with expulsion, forced repatriation and deportation. It then addresses the internment of civilians, which was one of the major novelties that the belligerent countries introduced in the European war. The chapter follows the spread of concentration camps throughout Europe and the British and French Empires, the internment gender and generational dimensions, and the beginning of the humanitarian activities that the mass internment of enemy aliens triggered. The third part of the chapter deals with another crucial novelty that concerned the property rights of the enemy aliens. States at war sequestered and confiscated their assets as part and parcel of the economic war they waged. The internment and sequestration of enemy property led to enormous growth in the apparatuses of the state. And this meant that state involvement in the lives of civilians increased disproportionately.

This chapter examines official attitudes toward aliens in peacetime during the nineteenth century by focusing first of all on their rights in a period characterized by sovereignty, nation-building, solidification of borders and the issue and reform of citizenship laws on the one hand, and on the emergence of globalization, migration and the construction of an international society on the other. The chapter delves into the debates on the right of asylum, expulsion, expatriation, and examines early policies of migration control and the dilemma of reconciling rights and freedom of movement with emerging anti-alienism that precipitated into violence. The second part of the chapter concentrates on citizenship as a legal device, exploring first of all practices of collective acquisition of citizenship triggered by annexations of territories, creation of new nation-states, plebiscites and option regimes incorporated in international treaties. It then deals with individual acquisition and loss of citizenship (naturalization and denaturalization), paying particular attention to the gender dimension of citizenship, conscription, dual citizenship and the ethnic shift in citizenship practices and notions that began to emerge at the turn of the century.