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Science at the Borders: Immigrant Medical Inspection and the Shaping of the Modern Industrial Labor Force. By Amy L. Fairchild. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. xvi, 385 pp. $48.00, ISBN 0-8018-7080-1.)
Post 9/11, immigration looms large in concerns about national security. Today, visitors, if not immigrants, conjure up specters of physical and bio-terrorism and the theft of jobs. Written before and without reference to current debates and concerns, Amy L. Fairchild's Science at the Borders is nonetheless a reminder of America's long history of engagement with immigration. Through detailed analysis of numbers, combined originally with Foucaultian theory, Fairchild traces changes in the immigrant medical examination to make nuanced and sophisticated arguments about "science and power-of the power of an industrial mindset to penetrate science and make the immigrant medical exam into a...