What counts as racist immigration policy?
Culling the Masses is a rich, methodologically ambitious book, which sheds much needed light on the factors that influence the adoption and repeal of racist immigration policies across the Americas. Contrary to previous accounts that suggest that the end of racial selection in immigration policy began as a domestic issue in the United States and Australia and then spread elsewhere, FitzGerald and Cook-Martin “find that geopolitical factors were the main drivers of the demise of racial selection.” The sustained attention to the international forces that shape domestic immigration policy—and the means through which they do so—is an invaluable contribution of this excellent book. Culling the Masses also demonstrates that democracy and racist immigration laws not only co-existed comfortably with each other, they have also been causally connected. Somewhat less convincing, however, is the assertion that liberal democracies essentially abandoned racist immigration laws at the end of the 1960s.