xix, 255 pages ; 24 cm

"In an obscure paragraph of a package of immigration reforms adopted in 1996, the United States government committed itself to developing "an automated system to track the entry and exit of all non-citizens, thus providing a way of identifying immigrants who stay longer than their visas allow." At the time that the legislation was supposed to be put into effect, however, some in the government came to regard this measure as likely to cause undue complications for millions of border- crossers, and the implementation of the law was postponed for two and a half years"--

"First published 2000" -- title page verso

Includes bibliographical references (pages 230-246) and index

Coming and going: on the state monopolization of the legitimate "means of movement" -- "Argus of the Patrie": the passport question in the French Revolution -- Sweeping out Augeas's Stable: the nineteenth-century trend toward freedom of movement -- Toward the "crustacean type of nation": the proliferation of identification documents from the late nineteenth century to the First World War -- From national to post-national? Passports and constraints on movement from the interwar to the postwar era -- "Everything changed that day": passport regulations after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001

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