Between the Homing Pigeon and the Vagrant: The Contract Labor System and the Creation of the Immoral Mexican Migrant, 1910–1929

Abstract This article traces how local, state, and federal officials in the United Sates weaponized morality against Mexican contract wage laborers in the first three decades of the twentieth century. The author argues that the sexual morals policing project targeting immigrant women suspected of prostitution and other immoral behaviors shaped the experiences of Mexican contract wage laborers as they sought entry into the United States and once they were admitted. By focusing on the racialized poverty of the Mexican, US immigration officials and employers created a stark binary of workers as “moral” law-abiding/“immoral” vagrant criminals depending on laborers compliance and participation within a burgeoning transnational contract labor system.