The Invention of the Passport: Surveillance, Citizenship and the State (Cambridge Studies in Law and Society)

In order to distinguish between those who may and may not enter or leave, states everywhere have developed extensive systems of identification, central to which is the passport. This innovative book argues that documents such as passports, internal passports and related mechanisms have been crucial in making distinctions between citizens and non-citizens. It examines how the concept of citizenship has been used to delineate rights and penalties regarding property, liberty, taxes and welfare. It focuses on the US and Western Europe, moving from revolutionary France to the Napoleonic era, the American Civil War, the British industrial revolution, pre-World War I Italy, the reign of Germany's Third Reich and beyond. This innovative study combines theory and empirical data in questioning how and why states have established the exclusive right to authorize and regulate the movement of people. "This innovative book argues that documents such as passports, internal passports and related mechanisms have been crucial in making distinctions between citizens and non-citizens. It examines how the concept of citizenship has been used to delineate rights and penalties regarding property, liberty, taxes and welfare. It focuses on the US and Western Europe, moving from revolutionary France to the Napoleonic era, the American Civil War, the British industrial revolution, pre-World War I Italy, the reign of Germany's Third Reich and beyond. This original study combines theory and empirical data in questioning how and why states have established the exclusive right to authorize and regulate the movement of people."--Jacket

This innovative book argues that documents such as passports, internal passports and related mechanisms have been crucial in making distinctions between citizens and noncitizens. It explains how the concept of citizenship has been used over the past 200 years to delineate rights and penalties regarding property, liberty, taxes and welfare. Focusing on the United States and Western Europe, it combines theory and empirical data in questioning how and why states have established the exclusive right to authorize and regulate the movement of people.

This innovative book argues that documents such as passports and related mechanisms have been used to make distinctions between citizens and non-citizens. It questions how and why states in the US and Western Europe have established exclusive rights to authorize and regulate the movement of people. In his writings, Karl Marx sought to show that the process of capitalist development involved the expropriation of the "means of production" from workers by capitalists. John Torpey. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 191-202) And Index.