Anna Pegler-Gordon Book order

Focusing on its historical significance, the book explores Ellis Island as more than just a welcoming entry point for European immigrants. It reveals the station's dual role as a site of detention and exclusion, particularly affecting Chinese, Japanese, and other Asian immigrants. The narrative highlights the experiences of those considered undesirable, detailing the station's transformation into a detention camp and deportation center from 1924 to 1954, thus providing a nuanced view of immigration in America.

When restrictive immigration laws were introduced in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, they involved new requirements for photographing and documenting immigrants - regulations for visually inspecting race and health. This work looks at the history of immigration policy in the United States through the prism of visual culture.