Sentiment and the Restrictionist State: Evidence from the British Caribbean Experience, ca. 1925

The International mobility control regime consolidated in the decade after World War I made intimate sentiment a systematic concern for states policing borders and rights. New US immigration laws in the 1920s made family reunification one of the few routes through which migrants could enter the US when their home society's quota was exhausted. Adjudicating the right to cross borders and work now required state agents to assess intimate bonds and the intentions they fostered: the sentimental as well as documentary dimensions of kinship. The impact of this shift was felt sharply in the British Caribbean, which was placed under quota restriction for the first time in 1924, culling legal immigration from the islands from over ten thousand to under five hundred per year. Here, Putnam details uses micro-historical sources to evaluate the consequences of the sentimental interests of the restrictionist state.