This book examines the policy and practice of the insanity clauses within the immigration controls of New Zealand and the Commonwealth of Australia. It reveals those charged with operating the legislation to be non-psychiatric gatekeepers who struggled to match its intent. Regardless of the evolution in language and the location at which a migrant's mental suitability was assessed, those with 'inherent mental defects' and 'transient insanity' gained access to these regions. This book accounts for the increased attempts to medicalise border control in response to the widening scope of terminology used for mental illnesses, disabilities and dysfunctions. Such attempts co-existed with the promotion of these regions as 'invalids' paradises' by governments, shipping companies, and non-asylum doctors. Using a bureaucratic lens, this book exposes these paradoxes, and the failings within these nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Australasian nation-state building exercises.

Offers a new perspective on the study of migration and mental illness, focusing on policy makers, customs officers and shipping companies Draws on a broad range of bureaucratic archival sources from New Zealand and Australia to provide a policy versus practice analysis of border restrictions Accounts for the development of the medico-legal system designed to deal with the 'transient insane'

Autorentext
Jennifer S. Kain teaches History at the University of Newcastle, UK, and is a Research Associate at the Institute of Historical Research, London where she held a 2016-2017 Junior Research Fellowship. She has published in Studies in the Literary Imagination, the International Journal of Maritime History, the Social History of Medicine, and in 2018 received a New Zealand History Research Trust award.

Inhalt

1 Introduction.- 2 Populating Australasia with Sound Minds.- Part I: New Zealand.- 3 Nation-Building, Agent Generals and Imported Lunatics, New Zealand, 1870 to 1879.- 4 Imbecile Passengers and Commercial Paradoxes, New Zealand, 1880 to 1898.- 5 Deportation, Domicile and Mental Deficiency, New Zealand, 1899 to 1930.- Part II: The Commonwealth of Australia.- 6. The 'Insane' and the White Australia Policy, 1901 to 1912.- 7. Eugenics and Border Control, Australia, 1912 to 1920.- 8 1. Effective Border Machinery, Ineffective Mental Equipment, Australia 1920 to 1930.- 9. Conclusion.