Abstract:
The Unruly Facts of Race explains how American ideas about race and ethnicity were transformed in the early twentieth century as an unintended consequence of anti-immigrant mobilization. Immigration restrictionist politicians believed that the United States should be a White, Anglo-Saxon, and Protestant nation. However, when they mobilized researchers to gather data in an attempt to rationalize their aims, they were met with unruly facts that did not support their racial project. Newer European immigrants, the data showed, were not much different from descendants of earlier immigrants from northern Europe. When facts failed to support their initial aims, exclusionist politicians instead turned to race as a marker of ineluctable difference. The United States transitioned to a country that encompassed various European groups but excluded non-White immigrants, as they were deemed too different to become a part of the nation. Kim’s analysis shows that throughout US history, the opportunity for belonging for some immigrants was predicated on the exclusion of others. He reveals that the selection and control of immigrants are core principles of the American nation-building project.
Bio:
Sunmin Kim is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Dartmouth College. He examines the nexus between race, immigration, and national belonging through the lens of knowledge production. Employing archival work, survey analysis, and in-depth interviews, Professor Kim studies how categories such as race, ethnicity, and citizenship are socially constructed through the work of social scientists, government officials, and activists. Professor Kim tracks how these actors’ work manifests in different domains, such as social sciences, immigration law, public opinion, and electoral politics. He has written about race and immigration policy, Asian American politics and identity, the construction of public opinion, and methods of historical sociology. His first book is The Unruly Fact of Race (2026), and he is at work on a second book, on the role of social science research in Japanese internment camps during WWII. Professor Kim’s research has appeared in numerous outlets, including Theory and Society, The Du Bois Review, Ethnic and Racial Studies, and Qualitative Sociology.
Co-sponsored by the Berkeley Interdisciplinary Migration Initiative.