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Katrina N. Jirik, Douglas C. Baynton. Defectives in the Land: Disability and Immigration in the Age of Eugenics, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, Volume 72, Issue 4, October 2017, Pages 506–508, https://doi.org/10.1093/jhmas/jrx016
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While race and gender are well-known categories in exploring immigration history, Douglas Baynton’s Defectives in the Land: Disability and Immigration in the Age of Eugenics presents detailed evidence that perceptions of disability played an equally important role in American immigration history in the years between the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the National Origins Acts of the 1920s. Baynton demonstrates that late nineteenth-century American society was increasingly concerned with defect and disability, and that these perceptions became embedded into immigration policy.
Using key sites such as Ellis Island, Baynton shows how immigration restriction laws were intended to slow the massive tide of immigrants coming to the United States by finding a way to admit only those individuals deemed likely to add to the nation’s productivity. As eugenic ideas and fears of race suicide became more prevalent in American society, immigration restrictions became more stringent; immigrants were thus redefined, from individuals “unable to take care of himself or herself in 1882… to persons whose defect ‘may affect’ the ability to earn a living in 1907” (37). Baynton highlights how perceptions of defect and disability influenced the decision-making process of immigration officials who often equated specific disabilities, such as blindness, deafness or scoliosis, and difference, such as poor physique or short stature, with the likelihood the person would become a public charge and, thus, a burden to the state.
