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This event marks the 150th anniversary of the Page Act of 1875, one of the first federal laws to restrict immigration to the United States — especially Asian immigration, as the law prohibited the importation of Asian contract workers, prostitutes (a provision targeted against Chinese women), and criminals.
The event will use the anniversary as an opportunity to discuss issues of race, gender, and labor in US immigration and Asian American history. The interdisciplinary panel of UC Berkeley professors will discuss their past or current work related to race, gender, or labor in US immigration history or Asian American Studies, and their thoughts on the legacies of the Page Act and related issues for the United States today.
Panelists include Catherine Ceniza Choy, Professor of Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley; Cybelle Fox, Professor of Sociology at UC Berkeley; Leti Volpp, Professor of Law at UC Berkeley; and Matrix Faculty Fellow Hidetaka Hirota, Associate Professor of History at UC Berkeley and Thomas Garden Barnes Chair in Canadian Studies.
Co-sponsored by the Berkeley Interdisciplinary Migration Initiative (BIMI), the UC Berkeley Department of Sociology, the Department of History, the Asian American Research Center, and the Center for Race and Gender.
Panelists
Catherine Ceniza Choy is Professor of Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley and an award-winning historian of Asian American history. She is the author of Asian American Histories of the United States (2022), which examines nearly 200 years of Asian migration, labor, and community formation in the U.S. Her previous books include Empire of Care (2003) on Filipino nurses in U.S. history and Global Families (2013) on Asian international adoption. Choy has been widely cited in media outlets such as The New York Times, CNN, and The Atlantic. She previously served as chair of the Department of Ethnic Studies and associate dean in multiple university divisions.
Cybelle Fox, Professor of Sociology at UC Berkeley, received a BA in history and economics from UC San Diego in 1997 and a PhD in sociology and social policy from Harvard University in 2007. Her main research interests include the welfare state, immigration, race and ethnic relations, American political development, as well as historical and political sociology. Her most recent book, Three Worlds of Relief (Princeton University Press, 2012), compares the incorporation of blacks, Mexicans, and European immigrants in the American welfare system from the Progressive Era to the New Deal. Fox won six book awards for Three Worlds of Relief, including the 2012 C. Wright Mills Award from the Society for the Study of Social Problems. Her next book project focuses on the rise of legal status restrictions in American social welfare policy since the New Deal. Her work has appeared in the American Behavioral Scientist, American Journal of Sociology, Journal of American History, Social Forces, Sociology of Education, Social Science History, Political Science Quarterly, Sociological Methods and Research, Law & Social Inquiry, and Studies in American Political Development. She is also co-author of Rampage: The Social Roots of School Shootings (Basic Books, 2004).
Leti Volpp is Professor of Law at UC Berkeley and a scholar of immigration law and citizenship theory, examining how law is shaped by culture and identity. She has published extensively on issues of immigration, gender, and race, with work appearing in Constitutional Commentary, Columbia Law Review, and UCLA Law Review, among others. She is the editor of Looking for Law in All the Wrong Places and Legal Borderlands. Volpp has received numerous honors, including fellowships from the Rockefeller and MacArthur Foundations, and is a member of the American Law Institute. She directs the Center for Race and Gender and is affiliated with multiple interdisciplinary programs at Berkeley.
Hidetaka Hirota (moderator) is a social and legal historian of U.S. immigration, specializing in nativism, immigration control, and policy from the antebellum era to the Progressive Era. His first book, Expelling the Poor (Oxford, 2017), examines 19th-century deportation policies and received multiple awards. He is currently working on The American Dilemma, which explores the tension between nativism and labor demand in shaping U.S. immigration policy, as well as projects on Japanese immigrants and the history of anti-immigrant sentiment. His research has appeared in leading history and migration studies journals. At UC Berkeley, he teaches U.S. immigration history and co-directs the Canadian Studies Program. He is also a 2024-2025 Matrix Faculty Fellow.