Race in Transit

Tracing the Politics of Migration from Ottoman Syria Through US Empire

At the turn of the twentieth century, life in Ottoman Syria was upended by European and US colonial and capital expansion. Many people responded by migrating to the United States. In doing so, they stepped into the world of international migration, where they had to navigate overlapping states and migration infrastructures – shipping companies and ticketing agents, health inspectors and border police, universities and kinship networks – that each facilitated, restricted, and policed movement.

With this book, Randa Tawil follows the itineraries of the early Syrian diaspora, stitching together migrants' travels across archives from Beirut, Marseille, Liverpool, Manila, Washington, D.C., Michigan, and Texas. She reveals the overlapping and contradicting ways in which race was forged globally in the early twentieth century and its effects on Syrians in the United States. Syrian migrants encountered multiple imperial and national legal regimes during transit, and their varying relationships with different empires set the conditions under which migrants were considered "desirable" or "undesirable" once they reached US borders. Focusing on the experiences of those on the move, Race in Transit makes migrants the agents of a world history that has too often relegated them to the sidelines.

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