Home/red-rock-eater/Mass Capture: Chinese Head Tax and the Making of Non-Citizens

Mass Capture: Chinese Head Tax and the Making of Non-Citizenswriting

critical-technical-practiceagre-secondary
1 min read · Edit on Pyrite

Source

  • Title: Mass Capture: Chinese Head Tax and the Making of Non-Citizens
  • Author: Lily Cho
  • Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
  • Publication Date: November 1, 2021
  • ISBNs:
    • - ePDF: 9780228009320 - ePUB: 9780228009337 - Open Access: 9780228009344 - Print (Cloth): 9780228008163
  • Language: English
  • License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND)
  • Location: Canada
  • URL: https://oer.pressbooks.pub/masscapture/

    • Content

    Description

    The work examines CI 9 documents -- identification forms issued between 1885-1953 by Canadian authorities to catalog Chinese migrants. These records contained biographical details and photographs, representing "the first mass use of identification photography in Canada."

    The author argues that these documents functioned as surveillance mechanisms producing non-citizenship status. Over 41,000 microfilm reproductions survive after originals were destroyed in 1963.

    Cho demonstrates how the archive reveals "traces of alternate forms of kinship" alongside evidence of family separation, offering "possibilities for beauty and dignity in the archive" beyond their original repressive function.

    Table of Contents

  • Introduction: Mass Capture
  • Chapter 1-5 covering non-citizenship, memory, kinship, representation, and citizenship anticipation
  • Coda: Shame about That Microfilm
  • Two appendices and references

    • Notes

  • This is an OER (Open Educational Resource) textbook, freely accessible online.
  • Relevant to Agre's capture model as a historical case study of systematic identification and tracking of a population through bureaucratic documentation.
  • The title "Mass Capture" directly invokes the vocabulary of Agre's capture model framework, applied to historical state surveillance of Chinese migrants in Canada.