Making Blacks Foreigners: The Legal Construction of Former Slaves in Postrevolutionary Massachusetts

If the narrative of immigration is rethought in the way suggested here, i.e., immigrant identities are not so much about choosing to move from "there" to "here," nor even about the brute fact of moving from "there" to "here," but about always being produced "here" in order to refuse individuals' claims upon the community, African-Americans might be seen not just as being connected to other immigrant experiences, but as offering the model for understanding the immigrant experience itself. All groups, whether European-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, Asian-Americans, or African-Americans, are made immigrants "here," not least when the state pins a "there" onto them as a strategy for managing their claims upon the community.' Of course, it goes without saying that such a rethinking of the narrative of immigration in terms of shared subordination does not preclude a simultaneous sensitivity to the hierarchies through which that subordination is instantiated.