This thesis is organised chronologically to cover the distinct operational phases of migration control. This is a subject that has been recognised as providing a challenge to researchers. One historian has astutely admitted that these regulations have created analytical complexities for those trying to disentangle them.53 As such, it is useful to delineate stages in the evolution of Australasian border control. Between the 1830s and 1920s migrant recruitment fluctuated according to colonial or dominion demand. It is important to note that systematic emigration existed alongside and separate from
colonial immigration restrictions. From the mid nineteenth century, colonies introduced what can be considered as a bonding system. This legal provision made the shipping companies responsible for providing financial guarantees for passengers deemed to be lunatic, idiotic, deaf, dumb, blind or infirm on arrival. From the late 1890s, these
‘undesirables’, now labelled as idiots and insane, were made deportable under a new legal framework. The Commonwealth of Australia then extended the scope of this function to incorporate what some contemporaries called a eugenic phase. This thesis uses the term eugenics to mean the ideologies and policies of improving the mental and physical qualities of future generations.54 As such, the 1912 inclusion of the so-called feebleminded, and those carrying transmissible defects in the list of prohibited
immigrants fits this description, in theory, if not in practice.
53 Haines, ‘Indigent Misfits or Shrewd Operators?’, p. 227.
54 Jackson, The Borderland of Imbecility, p. 37.
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By analysing how this legislation was made operational, this thesis uncovers the extent of disconnect between policy and practice, particularly regarding terminology.
This is because colonial concerns about newcomers confused ideas about unwanted
‘mental’ and ‘moral’ traits. Nowhere was this more obvious than in New Zealand’s first immigration restrictions, promoted by its instigator as designed to prevent the entry of
‘half scamps and half lunatics’.55 While a forthcoming article by this author frames the so-called ‘ne’er-do-well’ as a dysfunctional immigrant, this thesis considers how borderline types were confused with the ‘idiots’ and ‘insane’.56 It examines the roles and the motivations of those border officials tasked with making these decisions. Most were local doctors who struggled to operate under an-ill-defined system. Only in the case of Australia’s Dr William Perrin Norris is it possible to create a proper biography which details his career progression, influences and motivations. As will be shown, Norris moved between the British world, and beyond, with ease, unlike many port health officials who worked in isolation.
This thesis also seeks to demonstrate how the idea of excluding the British
‘mentally ill’ was met with a broad consensus by colonial administrators. These were the same officials who would struggle to reconcile the rejection of those unable to work due to physical or educational shortcomings. This study therefore highlights a number of paradoxes within the concept of the British world. In theory, the British ‘mentally ill’
were prevented from moving freely between its regions or enjoy the protection provided by colonial structures.57 And yet, although historians have considered how
discrimination against the ethnic ‘other’ challenged the idea of an inclusive British
55 NZPD, Third Session 1873, p. 1538.
56 Jennifer S Kain, ‘The Ne’er-do-well: Representing the dysfunctional migrant mind, New Zealand 1850-1910’ in Leigh Wetherall Dickson and Anita O’Connell ed. Representing and Expressing States of Mind, Studies in the Literary Imagination, 48:1 (forthcoming, expected end 2015).
57 Marjory Harper & Stephen Constantine, Migration and Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 347.
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world, the experience of the white ‘mentally ill’ is not so clear-cut.58 Despite their theoretical exclusion, evidence points to many gaining entry. Whether through the use of financial bonds, exemptions or influential relatives, this study highlights how the system was beset with loopholes and subjectivity. Likewise these Australasian regions, New Zealand in particular, were promoted by politicans and travelogue writers as
‘invalids’ paradises’.59 This ideal complicated the concept of border control, as did the incidences of people colluding with officials to prevent their relatives from landing.
Furthermore, shipping companies persistently challenged the tenuous legal framework.60
The new research uses archival information to demonstrate how British world border operations were messy, malleable and discretionary. It shows how each attempt to systematise border management between the 1830s and 1920s was flawed. To investigate these themes a number of key research questions underpin this study: who, how, where decided whether a migrant was mentally suitable to enter Australasia?; what were the influences which drove the evolution of these practices?; how far was the act of migration itself seen as triggering ‘mental illness’?; and ultimately, what does the system tell us about British world operations?
Thesis Structure
Because this research relates to the restriction of people moving within the British world, the chapters are structured as follows. Chapter One explores this British world concept in more detail, in particular the political and administrative systems relevant to
58 Catherine Hall, ‘What Did the British World Mean to the British? Reflections on the Nineteenth Century’, in Buckner & Francis, eds. Rediscovering the British World, p. 21.
59 James Belich, Paradise Reforged: A History of New Zealanders from the 1880s to the year 2000 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2001), p. 173.
60 Historians have considered these challenges in relation to racial exclusions. See for example Laura Tabili, We Ask for British Justice: Workers and Racial Differences in Late Imperial Britain (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1994); Lucy E. Salyer, Laws as Harsh as Tigers: Chinese Immigrants and the Shaping of Modern Immigration Law (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1995).
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this study. It considers the real and imagined frameworks within which ideas about migration control would emerge. This level of contextual information is organised into three broad themes. First, the political administration of the emerging colonies is examined to show that the granting of responsible government meant the colonies took greater control over their borders. Second, it considers how British world institutions and customs were transferred from metropole to periphery. Of special significance were the realms of welfare provisions, medicine and law. Finally, a broader examination is given to the emerging categorisations of character, mental illness and intellectual ability. This wider context is necessary because these degeneration theories emanating from Europe would inform colonial attempts to categorise their newcomers.
Chapter Two moves on from this contextualisation of systems and theories to consider the practicalities of migration control between 1830 and 1860. This was an era of systematic emigration, when land sales were used to fund the emigration of labourers to rural Australasian regions. Analysis of these schemes shows how operational
structures existed in which migrants were selected, controlled and increasingly
scrutinised. It was within these operations that a number of mechanisms for migration control were introduced. Third party referees had to guarantee that intending emigrants were of ‘sound mind’ while ship’s surgeons monitored migrants’ health and conduct en-route. Using the case study of Otago, New Zealand, the chapter demonstrates how arbitrary these early controls operated in practice. And yet, the primary sources
involving New Zealand and Scottish officials illuminate how closely some British world administrators worked together to try to improve selection methods. Some British controls were tightened after colonists complained about immigrants displaying insane tendencies on arrival. As such, British world operational networks in this era were tightly fused.
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Chapter Three traces this evolution through to the national migration controls of the 1870s. Regional initiatives took second place to the New Zealand government’s desire to expand the population with the morally, mentally and physically fit. This national scheme involved a new level of officialdom based in Britain which was
increasingly derided as too autonomous by politicians and doctors in New Zealand. The London-based Agent General relied on British selecting officers, referees and port officials. New Zealand politicians therefore had to make a number of concessions in their desire to expand the domestic population. Not only were they reliant on controls enforced thousands of miles away, they had to admit to the inevitability of some newcomers being unsuitable. Instead it was the regional politicians and institutional officials within New Zealand who would petition for tighter controls. It is within this era that New Zealand introduced its first health based immigration restrictions – the title of which clearly defined its purpose – the Imbecile Passengers Act. This chapter
introduces the bureaucratic complexities that would continually disrupt the attempts to both attract and exclude people based on ideas about mental disease. This was an era when medical theories started to focus more on the dangers of imported illnesses and the drain on public funds.
These financial concerns are drawn out further in Chapter Four. This chapter concentrates on the workings of the Imbecile Passengers Act between 1876 and 1899.
This mechanism became more prominent after assisted migration was phased out. Its purpose did not translate properly to its practices. As such, its legality became increasingly challenged by shipping companies, medical superintendents and
immigrants themselves. This was a period in which economic and trans-colonial links became more prominent. Australians and New Zealanders became more aware of their national identities and engaged with inter-colonial concerns about security and trade.
These modernising tendencies were not however reflected in migration control. The
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primary sources employed show that the parochialism of the border administrators endured, as did the use of incoherent rhetoric and procedures. It was in this era that attempts to exclude paupers and the illiterate were derided as offensive to British world ideals. Those on the so-called borderline of imbecility were not, however, given the same levels of leniency by politicians.
Globalisation and wider influences become more apparent in the final part of this thesis. The last three chapters use a transnational approach to compare the policy and practices between New Zealand and the Commonwealth of Australia. Chapter Five takes a broader view of British world migration control. At the turn of the twentieth century, the immigration restriction legislation of Britain’s white settlement colonies was brought into line with that of the United States. Imperial sanctioning of the prohibited immigrant clause created a new kind of common bureaucratic structure in which undesirables could be rejected. Those attempting illegal entry faced fines, imprisonment and, ultimately, deportation. Shipping companies, who had long been seen as accomplices of undesirable immigration, were now made liable for the removal of unwanted migrants. This chapter demonstrates how this new provision was derived from previous Anglo-sphere legislation. It also compares the political debates in
Australia and New Zealand to highlight how border controllers were not given guidance as to how to operate the new systems. As such, the maritime administrators persisted with their existing parochial methods, left over from the nineteenth century.
Chapter Six examines how Australia finally took the lead in attempting to define better processes and standardise their operations. It was in the 1910s that the medical administrators finally attempted to define medico-legal border controls. Unlike New Zealand, Australia employed heredity clauses to target those with the vagaries of
transmissible disability, diseases or defect. In practice, however, New Zealand officials employed similar rhetoric when labelling undesirable immigrants. It was the Australians
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who engaged with eugenic theory on a more political level. Their first Commonwealth Medical Officer, Dr W. Perrin Norris, sought to tighten the Australian British-based controls. He also advocated using the Australasian systems to manage migration to New Zealand and Canada. Despite his ambition, Norris’ efforts would be curtailed by
tensions between state and commonwealth, and would be ultimately derailed by the First World War.
Chapter Seven shows that Norris’ ideas re-emerged in the post-war period as part of the empire settlement schemes. Migrants were assessed for their suitability through standardised medical inspections in Britain. Still administrators could not align their processes at the dispatching and receiving ports. It took another Australian medical reformer, Sir Neville Howse, to suggest that some people were simply not mentally strong enough to cope with the act of migration itself. This was official recognition of what border administrators had been struggling with for nearly one hundred years.
Despite a series of transformations designed to bring standardisation and closer regulation, the same problem persisted. Regardless of the transformation of methods and terminology, ‘mental illness’ in migrants was simply too difficult to police.
This thesis sheds light on the overall system of British world migration control by piecing together the different themes hitherto considered in isolation. By exploring the disordered nature of immigration control, it adds a new perspective to the existing scholarship on transnational immigration legislation and Australasian asylum studies.
The in-depth examination of border control systems also contributes to our
understanding of the links between migration and illness in the British world during this period.
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