Interracial Romances of American Empire: Migration, Marriage, and Law in Twentieth Century California.

Abstract

This dissertation begins and ends with migration stories, starting with Filipinos in Hawaii and later, the repatriation of over two thousand men, women and children to the Philippines between 1935-1941. Within these stories, I trace a complex history of migration, sexuality, and white supremacy that spans the Pacific. Interracial Romances of American Empire examines Filipino American lives through the lenses of two seemingly separate, but connected themes of migration and marriage. I argue that experiences of migration and miscegenation were central to how Filipino nationals viewed and defined their place in American society. In California debates about the “Filipino Problem” dominated discussions about unrestricted immigration in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Scholarship on this period has framed this new immigration problem in terms of race and labor. This dissertation shifts that focus and situates the emergence of the “problem” within themes of migration and miscegenation instead. I focus on migration and marriage laws to understand the ways in which federal and state legislation shaped Filipino American lives. That Filipinos were “U.S. nationals” meant that they came not as immigrants, but as U.S. subjects. What did it mean that Filipinos – unlike other Asian ethnics at the time – traveled freely across national borders in the midst of intense anti-Asian immigration restriction? This dissertation traces the transformation of the Filipino from “colonial subject” to “foreign alien” by looking at changing U.S.-Philippine relations in the interwar period and the repatriation movement of the 1930s. It also examines the place of interracial marriage in the “Filipino Problem” debate to show how attempts to restrict intermarriage and migration shaped the language of interracial intimacy and citizenship. By looking at the connections between state miscegenation laws and federal immigration policies, this project explores constructions of Filipino sexualities, family, and citizenship. It also pays particular attention to the ways in which Filipinos challenged these constructions through cultural and legal resistance.