The Political Economy of the Anti-Chinese Movement in California in the Nineteenth Century

Linan Peng ()
Additional contact information
Linan Peng: Texas Tech University

Journal of Economics, Race, and Policy, 2022, vol. 5, issue 1, No 2, 13-24

Abstract: Abstract The passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 painted one of the most unsettling themes in the history of discrimination against ethnic minorities in the nineteenth century. The enactment marked the first federal legislation to prevent the immigration of laborers of a specific ethnic group. This paper develops a model to study the anti-Chinese movement in California by drawing on the previous literature. The model suggests that adverse economic conditions in the labor market, direct competition between Chinese workers and native workers, well-organized native labor, and durable legislation can explain why there was a three-decade time lag between the first wave of Chinese agitation and the passage of the exclusion act. It can also explain why organized labor could influence politics in California.

Keywords: Anti-Chinese movement; Chinese Exclusion Act; Organized labor; Political economy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s41996-020-00076-9 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:joerap:v:5:y:2022:i:1:d:10.1007_s41996-020-00076-9

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.springer ... policy/journal/41996

DOI: 10.1007/s41996-020-00076-9

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economics, Race, and Policy is currently edited by Gary A. Hoover

More articles in Journal of Economics, Race, and Policy from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().