Migration, Citizenship, and Empire in the Interwar Pacific


ACLS Fellowship Program




This project researches Filipino migration to United States territory in the interwar period through the lens of “imperial citizenship:” the claims that colonial subjects could make on their ruling power. Following the United States’s conquest of the Islands (1898-1902), colonial policy aimed at developing the Philippines as a separate territory, but following World War I, large numbers of Filipinos—who had the right to migrate as “US nationals”—traveled to the West Coast, many through Hawaii. As they confronted labor repression, racial exclusion, and nativist movements, Filipinos articulated “imperial” claims on the grounds of their “allegiance” to the United States, asserting their rights to migrate, to be naturalized, to sexual and conjugal freedom, and to labor and welfare rights.