On the ‘settler’s alibi: Leti Volpp, ‘The Indigenous As Alien’, UC Irvine Law Review, 5 2, 2015
08Jul15
Excerpt: Immigration law, as it is taught, studied, and researched in the United States, imagines away the fact of preexisting indigenous peoples. Why is this the case? I argue, first, that this elision reflects and reproduces how the field of immigration
law narrates space, time, and national membership. But despite their disappearance from the field, Indians have figured in immigration law, and thus I describe the neglected legal history of the treatment of Indians under U.S. immigration and citizenship law. The Article then returns to explain why indigenous people have disappeared from immigration law through an investigation of the relationship between “We the People,” the “settler contract,” and the “nation of immigrants.”
Filed under: Uncategorized | Closed
settler colonial studies blog 