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D E S T I N AT I O N
CHINA
IMMIGRATION TO CHINA
IN THE POST-REFORM ERA

EDITED BY
ANGELA LEHMANN
& PAULINE LEONARD
Destination China
Angela Lehmann • Pauline Leonard
Editors

Destination China
Immigration to China in the Post-Reform Era
Editors
Angela Lehmann Pauline Leonard
University of Xiamen University of Southampton
Xiamen, China Southampton, UK

ISBN 978-1-137-55710-0    ISBN 978-1-137-54433-9 (eBook)


https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54433-9

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018944676

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019


This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the pub-
lisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the
material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The
publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institu-
tional affiliations.

Cover illustration: © Christian Petersen-Clause, Plane Icon © Mike Rowe/Noun Project


Cover design by Tjaša Krivec

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
America, Inc.
The registered company address is: 1 New York Plaza, New York, NY 10004, U.S.A.
Foreword

It is an utter pleasure to write this Foreword. As Angela and Pauline have


told me, this book is my fault. Pauline Leonard has been my colleague at
the University of Southampton for nearly 20 years. I have always been so
impressed with her work on migration, especially the book on expatriates
in Hong Kong and the excellent new book on the British in South Africa
(with Daniel Conway). Although I was already familiar with Angela’s
wonderful book on expatriates in China, I only really got to know Angela
on my first trip to Xiamen University in 2014. During this trip, it was
decided that Southampton University and Xiamen University should forge
closer collaborations, and that research on ‘migration’ was an obvious
opportunity for collaboration. I was delighted to be paired with Angela to
develop this collaboration, with the assumption that we would work
closely together on a collaborative project. I was very excited by all of this
and I was very much looking forward to working with Angela. However,
on the international flight back to the UK it began to occur to me that my
colleague Pauline would be an even better collaborator for Angela. I just
instinctively knew that Pauline and Angela would ‘hit it off’ professionally
and personally. I approached Pauline about this idea. Luckily Pauline
already was familiar with Angela’s work and said that she would be happy
to have a Skype chat with Angela. Soon after, Pauline came to see me to
say that Angela and she had just had a fantastic conversation and the idea
for the present book was more or less born right there and then.
So, I suppose, in a small way, they are right: this book is my fault. I am
so honoured to be asked to write the Foreword for this book. As you
would expect—given Angela and Pauline’s expertise in the field—this is a

v
vi FOREWORD

wonderful book that brings together a diverse array of high-quality schol-


ars doing inspiring ethnographic research on a variety of migrant experi-
ences across a range of locations in China. The writing throughout is of
very high quality, and each chapter is a page turner. Researchers interested
in migrant or ‘expatriate’ lives and identities; migrant trajectories, migrant
entrepreneurship, and migration routes; expatriate or migrant ‘settlement’
and ‘integration’; temporary and longer-term migration in China; as well
as an array of different types of migrants and migrant and expatriate expe-
riences—from single professional female migrants to migrants who
brought their families with them to China—will thoroughly enjoy this
captivating book.
This book is a game-changing work that disrupts common assumptions
that in China migration is always only a matter of internal migration—this
book shines a much needed and very bright light on China’s burgeoning
international migration and on the lives of the ‘the new migrants’ who are
living their lives and making their livings in contemporary China.

SouthamptonDerek McGhee
November 2017
Preface

The subject matter of this book represents an important and developing


field of scholarly research and policy-related debates in the global migra-
tion order. Over the past 30 years, the world has witnessed a dramatic shift
in China’s status, from a nation notable for its numbers of out-migrants to
a receiving destination for international migrants from all over the world.
It is in this context that we started talking about producing a collection
that brings together the latest scholarship on this emerging phenomenon.
We started the process of tracking down scholars working in this area—
not many, admittedly, but those who are, are researching such fascinating
and diverse issues, and writing in such accessible and informative styles,
that our excitement about the book grew apace. We hope that the collec-
tion succeeds in producing a window onto China’s ‘new migrants’ and the
breadth and diversity of peoples now arriving to make new lives.
The collection is the result of close collaboration with a highly profes-
sional group of scholars who never failed to respond to our requests with
anything other than good cheer and prompt revisions. We are very grate-
ful to them as they have been a real pleasure to work with. At times prog-
ress was slow, as both editors dealt with some major life events, and all of
us take regular trips to China to source our data, but their support and
patience was never lost and we are very grateful to them. As a group of
contributors, we are all indebted to our research respondents, on whose
narratives and life experiences the chapters in this volume are based.
As editors, we would also like to thank the support and encouragement
of colleagues at our institutions. Angela would like to thank the University
of Xiamen for their financial support through the Presidents’ Innovation

vii
viii PREFACE

Fund. In particular, Angela thanks her colleagues at the Department of


Sociology and Social Work at the University of Xiamen, and Professors Hu
Rong and Yi Lin for their support and patience. Without the incredibly
generous research assistance of Zeng Shuang, this project would have
been much slower in achieving this end result.
Pauline would particularly like to thank the University of Southampton’s
School of Social Sciences for their visionary financial support through the
Strategic Development Research Fund. This enabled research trips to
China for discussion and planning with Angela and time for data collec-
tion. A huge thanks from both editors goes to Derek McGhee, a wonder-
ful and visionary colleague who foresaw the possibilities of this
collaboration. More generally, the development of the China Research
Centre at the University of Southampton and the energy and enthusiasm
of colleagues within this have provided a rich and supportive context. We
would also like to thank the publishers at Palgrave China for their support
and patience.
Contents

1 International Migrants in China: Civility, Contradiction,


and Confusion   1
Pauline Leonard and Angela Lehmann

Part I Getting In and Getting On: Negotiating Bureaucracy


and Immigration Restrictions  19

2 Marriage Immigration and Illegality in China’s Ethnic


Borders  21
Elena Barabantseva

3 Residence Registration in China’s Immigration Control:


Africans in Guangzhou  45
Heidi Østbø Haugen

Part II New Country, New Beginning? Constructing New


Identities and Social Positions  65

4 Educational Desire and Transnationality of South Korean


Middle Class Parents in Beijing  67
Xiao Ma
ix
x CONTENTS

5 From Expatriates to New Cosmopolitans? Female


Transnational Professionals in Hong Kong  91
Maggy Lee and Thomas Wong

Part III A Land of Opportunity? Working as a Foreigner in


Post-reform China 121

6 Japanese Labour Migration to China and IT


Service Outsourcing: The Case of Dalian 123
Kumiko Kawashima

7 ‘Devils’ or ‘Superstars’? Making English Language Teachers


in China 147
Pauline Leonard

Part IV Making Urban Spaces: Entrepreneurialism,


Multiculturalism, and Cosmopolitanism 173

8 Culinary Globalization from Above and Below: Culinary


Migrants in Urban Place Making in Shanghai 175
James Farrer

9 Creating and Managing an International Community:


Immigration, Integration, and Governance in a Mainland
Chinese City 201
Angela Lehmann

Index 229
Notes on Contributors

Elena Barabantseva is Senior Lecturer in Chinese International relations


at the University of Manchester, UK. She researches nationalism, mobility,
and borders in contemporary China. In 2015–2018 she is participating in
the China-Europe ‘Immigration and the Transformation of Chinese
Society’ research project (ESRC Ref ES/L015609/1) focusing on mar-
riage migration to China from Vietnam and Russia.
James Farrer is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Graduate
Program in Global Studies at Sophia University, Tokyo. Largely
employing ethnographic methods, his research focuses on cities in
East Asia, including projects on sexuality, nightlife, expatriate com-
munities, and urban food cultures. His publications include Opening
Up: Youth Sex Culture and Market Reform in Shanghai, Shanghai
Nightscapes: A Nocturnal Biography of a Global City (with Andrew
Field), and The Globalization of Asian Cuisines: Transnational
Networks and Culinary Contact Zones (editor). Farrer has lived in Asia
for more than two decades, spending part of every year in Shanghai
while based in Tokyo.
Heidi Østbø Haugen is a researcher at the Department of Culture
Studies and Oriental Languages, University of Oslo, Norway. She holds a
PhD in Human Geography. Her work has focused on migration and trade
between China and West Africa. She has carried out 16 months of ethno-
graphic fieldwork among Africans in Guangzhou, South China, and trav-
elled alongside research participants to Nigeria, Ghana, Togo, and the
Gambia. Prior to entering academia, Haugen studied Chinese in Beijing

xi
xii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

and worked for the World Food Programme in Dakar. She is a steering
group member in the Chinese in Africa/Africans in China Research
Network and has previously chaired the Nordic Association for China
Studies.
Kumiko Kawashima is a lecturer at the Department of Sociology,
Macquarie University, Australia. Her research has investigated the nexus
between individual lives, global capitalism, and social transformation in
post-industrial contexts through the lens of transnational migration. Her
publications include ‘Uneven Cosmopolitanism: Japanese Working
Holiday Makers and the “Lost Decade”’ (2014) in Jeremy Breaden et al.
(eds) Internationalising Japan, ‘Temporary Labour Migration and Care
Work: The Japanese Experience’ in Journal of Industrial Relations (2013;
with Michele Ford), vol. 55 (3); and ‘Becoming Asian in Australia:
Migration and a Shift in Gender Relations Among Young Japanese’ in
Intersections: Gender and Sexuality in Asia and the Pacific (2012) vol. 31.
Maggy Lee has written extensively on transnational migration (including
lifestyle migrants, expatriates, and migrant labourers), irregular migration
and human trafficking, border policing, and the criminology of mobilities.
Her current research projects include ‘Big Data, Live Methods and
Surveillance Subjectivities Among Transnational Migrants in Hong Kong’
(with M. Johnson, Goldsmiths, University of London and M. McCahill,
University of Hull, funded by the British Academy) and ‘Curating
Development’ (with M. Johnson, Goldsmiths, University of London and
D. McKay, Keele University, funded by the UK Arts and Humanities
Research Council). Her books include Human Trafficking and Trafficking
and Global Crime Control.
Angela Lehmann is a sociologist who has been conducting research on
migration into China for several years. She was awarded her PhD from the
Australian National University and her first book Transnational Lives in
China: Expatriates in a Globalizing City was published by Palgrave
Macmillan in 2014. Lehmann’s research interests include urban sociology,
ethnicity, and gendered identities and migration. In 2017, she was awarded
the Fujian Friendship Award for her contribution to the social and eco-
nomic development of Fujian province. Angela recently returned to
Australia to take up a policy analysis position within the university sector.
Pauline Leonard is Professor of Sociology in the Department of
Sociology, Social Policy, and Criminology at the University of Southampton,
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
   xiii

UK, where she is also Director of the Economic and Social Research
Council (ESRC) South Coast Doctoral Training Partnership and Founding
Director of the Work Futures Research Centre. She has long-standing
research interests in professional and labour migration, with expertise in
the ways race, gender, and class intersect in postcolonial contexts. Her
books include Expatriate Identities in Postcolonial Organizations: Working
Whiteness (2010, Palgrave) and Migration, Space and Transnational
Identities: The British in South Africa (with D. Conway, 2014, Palgrave).
Xiao Ma is a PhD candidate in Anthropology at Chinese Studies, Leiden
University Institute for Area Studies, the Netherlands. She has
obtained a Master’s Degree in Sociology from China Agricultural
University in Beijing. Her PhD project concerns South Korean
migrants in China with a focus on educational issues. She has con-
ducted one year of ethnographic research (2014–2015) mainly in
Beijing and Tianjin in North China, also shortly in Seoul, the capital
city of South Korea. Her PhD project is funded by the China
Scholarship Council and Modern East Asia Research Centre
(MEARC) PhD Research Grants in the Netherlands. Ma also studied
Korean language at Sogang University Korean Language Education
Center in Seoul (2013–2014), funded by the Korea Foundation.
Thomas Wong is a sociologist whose research interests include family,
class, and social mobility, and the history and politics of colonial gover-
nance. He has pioneered the benchmark study of social classes in Hong
Kong and helped to promote the study of Hong Kong society through
oral history as well as social surveys.
CHAPTER 1

International Migrants in China: Civility,


Contradiction, and Confusion

Pauline Leonard and Angela Lehmann

Introduction
Over the last 40 years, China’s position within the global migration order
has been undergoing a remarkable shift. From being a nation most nota-
ble for its numbers of emigrants, China has increasingly become a destina-
tion for immigrants of all nationalities: from Africa to Asia, America to
Europe and Australasia, people of all backgrounds are arriving to live and
work in a country which, for many years, was largely closed to the outside
world. China is, it would seem, finally becoming a reciprocal member of
the globalised world economy, with all its inherent mobilities and fluidities
(Fielding 2016).
What attracts migrants to China, and how are they received once they
arrive? How are Chinese authorities and Chinese residents responding to
the ever-increasing numbers of ‘foreigners’ in their midst? The authors in
this volume turn to answer these questions in depth. Focussing on such
diverse migrant communities as African traders in Guangzhou, Japanese
call centre workers in Dalian, migrant restaurateurs in Shanghai, marriage

P. Leonard (*)
University of Southampton, Southampton, UK
e-mail: Pauline.Leonard@soton.ac.uk
A. Lehmann
University of Xiamen, Xiamen, China

© The Author(s) 2019 1


A. Lehmann, P. Leonard (eds.), Destination China,
https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54433-9_1
2 P. LEONARD AND A. LEHMANN

migrants on the Vietnamese borderlands, South Korean parents in Beijing,


Europeans in Xiamen, and Western professionals in Hong Kong, as well as
the booming expansion of British and North American English language
teachers across the nation, the accounts offered here reveal in intimate
detail the motivations, experiences, and aspirations of a diverse sample of
foreign migrants in China. Strikingly, what the stories also expose are the
contradictions which appear integral to each migrant’s experiences of
China; many of whom are, on the one hand, enthusiastically welcomed,
while, on the other hand, received with some wariness and suspicion and
resisted through a sea of complex bureaucratic and legislative processes.
The chapters in this collection reflect this contradiction of experience.
The contributions range across a broad range of contemporary interna-
tional migrants to China; for many years restricted to foreign students,
colonialist expatriates, returned overseas Chinese and ethnic Chinese refu-
gees (Pieke 2012). China’s ‘new wave’ of migrants are quite different in
category, many responding to the new career opportunities offered by the
rapidly expanding economy, labour market skills shortages, and demo-
graphic shifts (Evandrou et al. 2014; Fielding 2016). Companies from
Japan and South Korea (see Kawashima and Ma, this volume) as well as
Singapore, together with corporations from the United States and Europe,
formed the first ripples of the wave, often concentrated in the Pearl River
Delta region (Fielding 2016). This started a process whereby China’s larg-
est cities began to feature semi-permanent foreign populations, which
expanded to include young professionals both male and female, traders
and entrepreneurs, artists, performers, students as well as, in Fielding’s
(2016) view, ‘adventurers and charlatans’ (p. 144). China’s more recent
economic prowess, not least in the context of the economic instability
which is fracturing Western economies, has expanded multiple opportuni-
ties to make a living. Notable amongst these are European culinary entre-
preneurs in Shanghai, entrepreneurs and business people in Xiamen and
West African traders in Guangzhou (see Haugen, Farrer, and Lehmann,
this volume). All the while, as Barabantseva exposes in her chapter, long-­
standing cross-border relationships based on ethnic ties and the ‘hidden’
migration which results through marriage and family formation continue
and, as Leonard outlines, the steady numbers of young people arriving
from English-speaking nations are increasing, largely to teach English to
the Chinese at all educational levels, from kindergarten to postgraduate
studies.
INTERNATIONAL MIGRANTS IN CHINA: CIVILITY, CONTRADICTION… 3

The volume offers a revealing insight into this ‘new wave’ of diverse
migrant communities in China. While it demonstrates real disparities in
the ways in which different migrants are received and treated, it also reveals
similarities in the rhetoric of experiences, meanings, and responses.
Together, the chapters as a whole illustrate that, as yet, China is still unde-
cided about the influx of foreigners in its midst: are they to be celebrated,
encouraged to stay, and integrated as citizens? Or are they to be suspected
and feared, as different in manners, morals, and political allegiances, and,
as such, better kept segregated and temporary? This uncertainty about the
status—both legally and in terms of cultural acceptance—of foreigners in
China is a shared experience for today’s non-Chinese people and commu-
nities living and working in China.
Discussions about whether and which migrants should be encouraged
or feared resonate with media, policy, and academic debates around the
world. Indeed, the creation of migration policies which seek to attract ‘the
best and brightest’ and dissuade those considered threatening to the local
job market, national security, and moral national character are also the
topic of much debate in Britain, Australia, Europe and the United States.
China, as it emerges as a more open and integrated part of the global
economy and its associated migration flows, is likewise considering such
issues. With China playing an increasingly important role in shaping cur-
rent economic and geopolitical global shifts, it is apt that the way the
country shapes its approach to migration is considered worthy of serious
academic attention. The studies presented in this volume provide exam-
ples of current ethnographic research into these new migratory experi-
ences within this context. While questions about the role of migration
within nation-building are not necessarily unique to China, what is unique
is the specific cultural and historical context of China’s ‘opening up’ and
the newness of these questions within its contemporary social, political,
and cultural landscape.

International Immigration to China


Treat insiders and outsiders differently, be strict internally, relaxed to the
outside world.1

For reasons derived from historical experience and political ideology,


international migrants or, as they are predominately termed within Chinese
policy and discourse, ‘foreigners’ have long occupied a sensitive and
4 P. LEONARD AND A. LEHMANN

somewhat ambivalent position in China (Brady 2003). While outwardly


valuing the building of connections and strong relationships with external
nations, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has consistently maintained
a strategy to control foreign presence and activities within China. From its
establishment in 1949, Chairman Mao Zedong was particularly conscious
of what he described as China’s ‘semi-feudal, semi-colonial’ status and, as
a result, established a policy by which foreign relationships were to be
highly regulated. In the ensuing revolutionary years and until the late
1970s, China remained largely closed to foreign visits, business, and resi-
dence, apart from a few ‘friends’ with political sympathies. However, fol-
lowing Mao Zedong’s death in 1976, this changed. From the late 1970s
onwards, China commenced the process of ‘opening up’ to the outside
world.
It was the desire for economic reform which instigated this dramatic
change in policy and approach (Pieke 2012). Aiming to establish a promi-
nent position within the global economy, China needed to benefit from
foreign technology and investment to modernise and become competi-
tive. Gradually, contacts with foreigners were generated, foreign invest-
ment and business presence welcomed, and tourism developed across
China, albeit with some caution: ‘“crossing the river by feeling the stones”
(moxhe shitou guo he)’ (Brady 2003: 187). The Special Economic Zones
(SEZs) constituted in 1979, which came to include the provinces of
Guangdong and Fujian that feature prominently in this book (see
Kawashima, Farrer, Haugen and Lehmann, this volume), were planned as
designated regions which would be particularly attractive to foreign inves-
tors, who were often treated as ‘honoured guests’ and accorded special
privileges unavailable to most Chinese citizens. That much of the research
presented in this volume was conducted within SEZs is important to note,
as it raises the notion that immigration to China is still today geographi-
cally uneven and is largely spatially governed by central planning and
administration (see Lehmann, this volume). Nevertheless, the develop-
ment of SEZs in the late 1970s and 1980s across China paved the way for
relatively targeted foreign investment and foreign migration into China
and to date these cities remain the predominant settings for development
and implementation of systems of monitoring and governance of increas-
ing numbers of migrants.
It was in the context of this apparent ‘opening up’ that the events at
Tiananmen Square in June 1989 heralded a backward step in China’s rela-
tions with the outside world. Horrified at the levels of violence they
INTERNATIONAL MIGRANTS IN CHINA: CIVILITY, CONTRADICTION… 5

witnessed, the later years of the 1990s saw China energetically bridge-
building and once again working hard to attract foreigners to come to live
and work in the country. However, the ‘special treatment’ of foreigners:
higher salaries, superior accommodation, and paid flights home started to
wane. The increasing numbers of Chinese people mobilising into the mid-
dle classes as a consequence of China’s political and economic reforms,
also seeking a more privileged lifestyle, triggered complaints about the
state’s preferential approach towards foreigners (Brady 2003: 230). Within
this increasingly market-driven national context, most admired by the
Chinese public are those who made their own money. Wealthy foreign
entrepreneurs are positioned at the top of the status hierarchy, placing
those unable to match the wealth levels of their business and professional
peers further down in terms of acceptance and respect (Matei and Medgyes
2003; Stanley 2012).
This is not to say, however, that foreign relationships have become any
less managed; they have remained strictly controlled by official bureau-
cracy, legislation, and regulations (Zhu and Price 2012). The 1994 Rules
Governing the Implementation of the 1985 Law on the Control of Entry
and Exit of Aliens provided the first legal framework regulating entry to
and departure from China in the post-Mao period (Zhu and Price 2012:
20). As authors discuss in this volume, with this legal mechanism came the
vocabulary of legality and illegality and the concept of san fei (the three
illegals): ‘illegal entry’, ‘illegal work’, and ‘illegal residence’, which con-
tinue to exert powerful traction within the development and implementa-
tion of Chinese migration policy (see Haugen, Barabantseva, and Lehmann
in this volume). In short, the san fei govern which foreigners may enter
China, and where they may travel, work, and live. In addition, guidelines
also exist as to how Chinese citizens should interact with non-Chinese visi-
tors (Brady 2003). Crucially, as outlined in a handbook (Wang Rihua
1993) on foreign affairs, Chinese people are reminded that they are sup-
posed to maintain a distance between themselves and foreigners, who are
suspected as potential harbingers of ‘corrosive influence’ due to ‘capitalist
thinking and way of living’ (Wang Rihua 1993: 100 in Brady 2003). This
call for the monitoring of China’s borders from its geographical extremi-
ties to the citizens of urban communities is central to current governmen-
tal approaches to migration in China (see Barabantseva, Haugen, and
Lehmann, this volume). Alongside reporting on illegal foreigners or local
residents aiding them, Chinese citizens are encouraged to avoid volun-
tarily discussing the nation or the Party’s internal matters with foreigners,
6 P. LEONARD AND A. LEHMANN

disseminating discontent with the political system, or engaging in ‘immoral


behaviour’ with foreigners (Wang Rihua 1993, see also Brady 2003: 4). As
a result of this contradictory position on international migration, at once
both welcomed and governed, a complex range of immigration laws, work
permit systems, and marriage legislation has been put in place to control
the extent of foreign penetration into China (see Haugen and Barabantseva,
this volume).
By the 2000s, it became clear that the rate of foreigners entering China
was increasing rapidly, and that the immigration laws needed revision and
reform. In 2004 a governmental working group was established to research
and design laws that would best address the challenges of new migration
into China, and in 2012 the new Exit and Entry Administration Law was
passed. Despite much anticipation and its aims to provide a coherent
framework for migration management, the new immigration framework
has ‘failed to result in uniform management of immigration’ (see Haugen,
this volume) due to inconsistencies, a lack of coordination, and unclear
communication of the new policies. Uncertainty and confusion surround-
ing migration law in China is experienced on a daily level by migrants and
the communities in which they live (see Barabantseva, Lehmann, and
Haugen, this volume). This volume explores these experiences of contra-
diction, complexity, and confusion for everyday migrants living in con-
temporary China and as such, challenges the reader to consider how new
forms of migration into the unique and rapidly changing Chinese context
can be situated both institutionally and culturally.
Despite this, as China progresses into the twenty-first century, the
establishment of the market economy and growing influence of neo-­liberal
ideologies have, to some extent, enabled autonomous migration and set-
tlement to grow (Pieke 2012 and Lehmann, this volume). Many foreign-
ers reside illegally or, as the contributions within this volume demonstrate,
play the system with short-term visas, travelling back and forth as ‘visitors’
rather than residents. Consequently, the exact numbers of foreigners resid-
ing in China are unknown. According to China’s most recent National
Census of 2010 however, the figure is at least 600,000: as Pieke (2012)
points out, a miniscule number compared to China’s population of nearly
1.4 billion (National Bureau of Statistics China 2017). Despite this still
small proportion of the total population, what is significant is the rate of
increase of this figure. As Haugen writes in her chapter, foreign entries
into China increased 35-fold between 1985 and 2012 (National Bureau of
Statistics 2014). It is the speed of change which provides the context for
INTERNATIONAL MIGRANTS IN CHINA: CIVILITY, CONTRADICTION… 7

the chapters presented in this volume, from Barabantseva’s marriage


migrants who until the last several years were not even considered interna-
tional migrants, to Haugen’s African migrants dealing with increasing
restrictions on their residence and movement to Leonard’s young English
teachers whose status within China has shifted from being revered to
being subjects of suspicion within a short space of time. For all the com-
munities studied in this volume, significant changes in the way they are
perceived, welcomed, or restricted have occurred in recent years. These
changing migration experiences provide us with a valuable ‘grassroots’
lens to explore and understand the everyday processes and personal inter-
pretations of rapid social change as China emerges into the global migra-
tion context.
However, as Pieke (2012) notes, to date there is very little research on
international immigration in contemporary China and, within the few
studies that do exist, even less which explores migrants’ everyday lives, the
formation of ethnic communities, and questions of integration and social
cohesion. By focussing on some of the diversity and complexity of the
‘new wave’ of foreigners into China, the research featured in this volume
aims to contribute to filling this knowledge gap.

Conceptualising China’s International Migrants


This volume’s interest in international migration in the dynamic context
of China is informed by a range of contemporary theoretical and empirical
literatures. The various contributions that follow discuss a broad spectrum
of migrants in terms of national, social, and occupational backgrounds:
from more ‘privileged’2 professionals, such as those in Xiamen discussed
by Lehmann, the career women featured in Lee and Wong, the South
Korean parents analysed by Ma, and the Japanese call centre workers in
Kawashima’s chapter; to skilled manual migrants, such as the chefs in
Farrer’s discussion, to lesser skilled traders and language teachers as dis-
cussed by Haugen and Leonard, and rural village dwellers as explored by
Barabantseva. With the possible exception of the cross-border marriage
migrants discussed by Barabantseva, all the migrations featured here can
be understood, in the main, as ‘voluntary’ decisions made by people with
the requisite resources to enable them to seek to forge a living in another
national context. The complex context of China means that few can be
unequivocally conceptualised as ‘lifestyle migrants’—those who ‘imagine
that they will be able to improve and take control of their lives … part of
8 P. LEONARD AND A. LEHMANN

a search for a better way of life’ (Benson 2011: 7). For Benson and Reilly
(2009), lifestyle migration is often about an escape from urban living,
materialism, and consumption, a ‘back to the country’ motivation to live
more simply in rural surroundings. Some chapters, such as Leonard’s, do
reveal migrants keen to escape perceived vicissitudes at home and experi-
ence the ‘real’ China, the rural areas which remain relatively untouched by
the state’s embrace of modernisation and urban expansion. Nevertheless,
full control over their lives, and complete freedom to make choices, will
always be ambiguous for China’s international migrants.
Most have more grounded motivations, perhaps accepting that their
lives will be politically, socially, and materially constrained in some ways
but willing to do their company’s bidding, escape the recession and aug-
ment their CVs, improve their economic and social status, or take new
opportunities from China’s fascination with the West (Lehmann 2014 and
see Leonard and Kawashima, this volume). However, to conceptualise
China’s international migrants simply as labour migrants is also inade-
quate. Intermingled with hopes to improve working lives are often touris-
tic ambitions of ‘seeing China’ or, as Ma’s chapter in this volume exposes,
parents for whom working in China is a means by which to improve their
social and cultural capital and access better schooling for their children.
Likewise, Kawashima’s young Japanese IT workers have complex motiva-
tions for spending time in China which challenge traditional binary under-
standings of economic migrants in search of better opportunities, or the
Western careerist high-flyer. At the other end of the spectrum are the
migrants described by Barabantseva for whom in all ways apart from legis-
lative, China’s landscape is already ‘home’, sharing as they do the same
ethnic culture as neighbouring villagers who happen to live the other side
of the demarcation of the national border. As the chapters reveal, there-
fore, the intersection of race, nationality, gender, and language, and the
diverse meanings attached to these within China, impacts substantially on
how these different migrants fare, their economic, social, and cultural out-
comes, and their subsequent lives and experiences.
This volume thus joins other work which seeks to complicate some of
the conceptual categorisations of contemporary migration literature
through its exploration of the intricacies and specificities of the Chinese
context. The migrants featured in this book can be broadly positioned
into three main categories, although membership may be somewhat slip-
pery and people may move between the categories due to changing cir-
cumstances and ambitions. First are those who have made a permanent
INTERNATIONAL MIGRANTS IN CHINA: CIVILITY, CONTRADICTION… 9

break and are residing in China on a relatively long-term basis. Farrer’s


culinary entrepreneurs and many of those discussed by Lehmann, Lee and
Wong, and Ma fall into this category. All can be understood to be ‘privi-
leged’ in that they have the resources to travel the world and the correct
cultural capital acceptable to the Chinese authorities to be awarded a work
permit and reside in the country for a longer period of time. However,
interestingly, within the Chinese context, this privilege only takes them so
far. Unlike the entitlements, such as citizenship, voting rights, and/or per-
manent residence that may be offered to this category of migrants in other
national contexts, these rewards remain unattainable. Their privilege is,
therefore, relatively ‘bounded’.
Second is a more mobile group: those who travel backwards and for-
wards to China or who have come for a shorter period of time, perhaps
returning home for a while and then coming back to China for another
stint. This migration pattern may be forced upon them through China’s
highly structured visa system, such as is the case with Haugen’s African
traders and some of Leonard’s (unqualified) language teachers.
Alternatively, it may be due to a corporate-sponsored fixed-term assign-
ment abroad, such as is the case with Kawashima’s call centre workers and
some of Ma’s, Lehmann’s, and Lee and Wong’s respondents. In many
cases, these migrants maintain their primary identification with the ‘home’
national context and are less likely to attempt to, or want to, integrate or
become ‘Sinophiles’.
Third is a ‘below the radar’ group—those who may, to all extent and
purposes, be living in China on a more-or-less permanent basis but remain
unseen and unrecognised by the legislative and administrative systems.
Indeed, as Haugen reveals, some may be ‘trapped’ in China, lacking in the
correct documents and unable to leave for fear of becoming visible and
therefore officially classified as ‘illegal’ and liable for criminal prosecution.
This group is arguably produced by China’s highly cautious and restrictive
visa and residence policies. Some of Haugen’s African traders fall into this
group, as do Barabantseva’s marriage migrants and some of Leonard’s
language teachers.
However, while the migrants within each of these categories share some
commonality of position and experience, these are complicated by the
many differences and divisions which also exist between them, not least of
which are the meanings attached to nationality and race within China.
While Western-ness, together with whiteness and native English-speaking
status, is notoriously adulated, overt racism and xenophobia are also
10 P. LEONARD AND A. LEHMANN

widespread (Brady 2003; Stanley 2012). Thus, while most professionals


can look forward to some degree of privilege attached to their position as
international migrants, extra opportunities may be extended to white peo-
ple irrespective of their skills levels, as noted in Leonard’s chapter. As she
discusses, such opportunities are not always welcome, as the meanings,
positions, and expected performances attached to these may not be those
that migrants feel comfortable with. Conversely, as Haugen describes,
people from the global South, not least the African continent, may face
blatant discrimination in work, legislation, and popular culture.
Furthermore, as Lee and Wong, Kawashima, and Ma’s chapters demon-
strate, race is further intersected by gender and social class, producing
nuanced differences between those who share similar regional or national
identities. In other words, race, gender, and social status may be modified
and/or produced anew within the Chinese context, as new meanings are
invested in these intersectional identities by both Chinese and interna-
tional migrants.
Further, as all the chapters in this volume reveal, these are further dif-
ferentiated through the meanings and identities that are produced within
particular spaces and places. As Leonard has argued elsewhere (2010),
space is not a neutral backdrop, but it is thoroughly implicated in the con-
struction and performance of identities, social, and cultural practices and
social relations through its histories and cultures, as well as it materialities
(see also Lefebvre 1991; Conway and Leonard 2014). As such, place
offers highly specific resources and opportunities to migrants. Productions
of, and opportunities for, ‘foreigners’ are different, for example, in post-
colonial contexts such as Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Xiamen on the one
hand, with their histories of ‘openness’ and Western presence, and Dalian
on the other hand, once a colony of Japan, which now aims to achieve a
dominant position within the global economy as ‘the world’s office’. The
form and quality of national and racialised performances become defined
through such spatial landscapes and constructed through colonial and
postcolonial histories. From this perspective, race and nationality are not
givens but processes by which racial difference is invoked and connected
with issues of identity, entitlement, and belonging (Bloch and Solomos
2010). Indeed, legacies of postcolonialism are inherent within the shaping
of many of the experiences and daily lives of the migrants presented here.
Likewise, responses to the migratory presence presented in this volume
are defined by the historically situated context of China’s rapid and recent
change and its previous interactions with racialised and ethnic ‘others’.
INTERNATIONAL MIGRANTS IN CHINA: CIVILITY, CONTRADICTION… 11

Our volume not only provides a lens onto the new wave of interna-
tional migrants into China but also confronts questions of how national,
racialised, and gendered identities are constructed and refashioned in
global contexts. Through the detailed discussion of migrants’ everyday
lives in the chapters which follow, we find the micro-enactment of inclu-
sion/exclusion, group definition, and identity (Bloch and Solomos 2010).
It is studies of this kind that enable us to advance our conceptual
frameworks of migrants in the global economy, as new contexts open
up and expand the complexities of mobilities, social structures and
identity-making.

Mapping the Book


The eight substantive chapters that follow have been organised themati-
cally, rather than by a ‘nationality by nationality’ approach, in order to
explore synergies and broader issues which arise out of the data. We start,
in Part I, Getting in and Getting on: Negotiating Bureaucracy and
Immigration Restrictions, by looking at issues connected with ‘getting in’
to China and some of the bureaucratic restrictions to citizenship which
may occur on arrival and during residence. The first substantive chapter,
by Elena Barabantseva, draws on ethnographic field research to explore
the changing governing processes of marriage migration in the ethnic area
on the Chinese-Vietnamese border. As in many other parts of the world,
residents in this area often share closer links with people across the border
than with their co-nationals. Both of Yao ethnicity, whether they live one
or the other side of the border may be of less relevance than their shared
culture, language, practices, and ethics. However, according to the
Chinese state, since 2007, marriages between the Chinese and Vietnamese
have been defined as ‘illegal’; regarded as having the potential to destabi-
lise China’s national security. The border has thus become a symbolic
space by which the state seeks to reassert Chinese national identity and
maintain sovereignty. Through Barabantseva’s rigorous analysis, we are
able to see how it is through the dynamics of borders that security c­ oncerns
are ingrained into everyday life; shedding light on how state sovereignty,
geographies of legality and illegality, intimacy and state security are con-
tinuously contested and negotiated.
The next chapter, by Heidi Østbø Haugen, continues the focus on the
complexities of China’s immigration legislation by looking at the experi-
ences of African traders in Guangzhou. This lens reveals how legislation
12 P. LEONARD AND A. LEHMANN

towards foreigners remains inconsistent and vague, with provincial regula-


tions and local law enforcement substantially influencing its interpretation
and application. Guangzhou has seen a rapid expansion in numbers of
Africans coming to live and work, attracted by its proximity to Hong
Kong. The former British colony provided visa-free entries for citizens
from African Commonwealth countries and, using this as a springboard
into China, prospective labour migrants discovered that merchandise in
the Mainland was sold at two-thirds of the price in Hong Kong. Resident
Africans started bringing itinerant traders to source goods while, at the
same time, visa agents in various African countries started peddling
Chinese visas to prospective migrants eager to leave Africa. The African
population in the region grew, even though many were disappointed that
they found no jobs in Chinese factories. Furthermore, Chinese authorities
curtailed opportunities to obtain residence permits or long-term visas after
arrival in China. Contradictorily, however, as the environment for undoc-
umented migrants has become increasingly hostile, the process of attain-
ing a legitimate exit visa by which to leave the country is difficult without
the correct documents. As Haugen’s chapter graphically reveals, some
become ‘trapped’ in China, impoverished, unable to work yet unable to
leave.
While China’s immigration laws and work permit systems remain chal-
lenging for most migrants, they are less so for professional or corporate
migrants. In stark contrast to the previous chapters, Part II, New Country,
New Beginning? Constructing New Identities and Social Positions, focuses
on the opportunities provided to professionals through migration to
China’s global cities of Beijing and Hong Kong. As the chapters in this
section reveal, the resources available to migrants within these cities of
major international standing can deliver new and sometimes tantalising
possibilities for capital accumulation. While these may hold out new
opportunities for constructing new identities and social positions for both
oneself and one’s family, the processes of doing so are made fraught by
social factors of class, gender, race, and nationality.
Xiao Ma’s chapter about South Korean migrants in Beijing examines
the parental sentiments, narratives and practices of South Korean parents
in Beijing as they make choices regarding schooling for their children.
Mapping their emotive decision-making processes involved in making
educational choices allows Ma to discuss the migrants’ relationship with
China as a destination. Through her research, Ma finds that the Korean
parents were using schooling as a kind of ‘transnational badge’, a display
INTERNATIONAL MIGRANTS IN CHINA: CIVILITY, CONTRADICTION… 13

of what they aspired to gain through their migration experience. Education


was therefore a choice about consumption and cultural capital and the
intensity of the decision-making processes about schooling was indicative
of the anxiety parents felt about their identities and social positions in both
China and Korea. In this way, Ma is arguing that migrants are seen as
active mobile subjects who make plans and strategies in an attempt to
transcend national, social, and cultural boundaries.
Maggy Lee and Thomas Wong’s chapter turns to Hong Kong, a former
British colony, now a ‘Special Administrative Region’ of China. Hong Kong
was ‘handed back’ to China in 1997 and has since operated under the ‘one
nation, two systems’ approach. This status and historical context means
Hong Kong’s cross-border movements are much more diverse, while
bound to mainland China’s. As such, Hong Kong offers an interesting lens
to China’s potential future as a migration destination, its longer history of
open opportunities to migrants suggesting directions in which China’s rap-
idly expanding and modernising cities may follow. At the same time, as Lee
and Wong argue, its unique history means that Hong Kong offers a ‘dis-
tinctive niche’ within the greater China region, perhaps offering exciting
opportunities to migrants for whom other places may be more challenging
and, even, discriminatory. As such, Lee and Wong focus on female transna-
tional professionals and seek to understand how privilege, gender, and con-
nection to place are understood differently by different migrants. In positing
a typology of female professional migrants in contemporary Hong Kong,
Lee and Wong describe an emerging migration type they term the ‘New
Cosmopolitan’ who seek unfettered mobility and unlimited lifestyle choice.
The ‘New Cosmopolitans’, defined in this chapter, are suggested as provid-
ing important clues to the emerging migration landscape in China, where
the foreigners of tomorrow are likely to be younger, more open to adven-
ture, and seeking cultural connection and understanding.
Part III, A Land of Opportunity? Working as a ‘Foreigner’ in Post-­
Reform China, picks up on the theme of the ways in which work and
careers may provide a route to a new life. To what extent can China be
seen as a new ‘land of opportunity’? To address this question, Kawashima’s
chapter traces the trajectory of new digital labour mobility from Japan to
the northeastern city of Dalian, often dubbed ‘the Hong Kong of China’.
For the young, relatively educated, and upwardly mobile migrants she
examines, the decision to work in Dalian for less pay, worse conditions,
and less status than home was complex. The casualisation of the Japanese
workforce and the opportunity to spend time outside of Japan contributed
14 P. LEONARD AND A. LEHMANN

to their migratory choices. Kawashima’s chapter provides an example of


the myriad ways that intra-Asian mobility epitomises some of the new ways
in which capital and labour move in a rapidly globalising contemporary
world. In her analysis of migration theory, Kawashima argues that these
migrants challenge us to rethink the way that migration is framed and
understood in complex socioeconomic and specific geographic contexts.
While the migrants this chapter presents are examples of relatively privi-
leged forms of mobility, their lives are marked by the rapid change and
vulnerability associated with a changing Chinese labour market, increas-
ingly geared towards attracting skilled return Chinese migration and
framed by the Chinese government’s anxiety about its ability to secure
science and technology jobs for its own graduates.
Young and adventurous migrants working in China are described in
Pauline Leonard’s work on English language teachers. Leonard’s chapter
explores the motivations and experiences of young, sometimes unqualified
Westerners who travel to China to teach English, often as a first job. While
these foreigners are treated with a degree of racialised privilege, they are
also, concurrently, treated with suspicion, and experience shifting notions
of power and status as English teachers are increasingly positioned as ‘low-­
quality’ foreigners within Chinese society. This contradictory experience
of racialised and gendered prestige is shown to contribute to a vulnerabil-
ity and confusion within their daily lives in China. In exploring this lived
experience of contradictory social positioning, Leonard allows us to chal-
lenge notions that whiteness is understood, in migratory contexts, as
seamlessly and universally privileged. The lives of these relatively low-­
skilled migrants in China provide a window through which to explore the
ways that migration can provide new, different, and contradictory sets of
identities.
Finally, in Part IV, Making Urban Spaces: Entrepreneurialism,
Multiculturalism and Cosmopolitanism, we explore how the growing
numbers of international migrants are changing China’s urban areas into
increasingly diverse and multicultural spaces, often raising new questions
about community cohesion and urban governance in the process. James
Farrer’s chapter describes in detail the way that migrant entrepreneurs in
Shanghai are reshaping the urban geography of areas of the city. He
describes how culinary entrepreneurs contribute to both a top-down and
bottom-up transformation of the city in ways that connect the past and the
projected future of China’s globalising spaces.
INTERNATIONAL MIGRANTS IN CHINA: CIVILITY, CONTRADICTION… 15

Angela Lehmann’s chapter explores how the increasing diversity of


some city suburbs and neighbourhoods leads to new challenges for urban
community governance and new conversations about the meaning and
role of community. Focusing on the multicultural and increasingly cosmo-
politan Guan Ren district in Xiamen as a case study, the chapter looks at
how changes taking place at grassroots level within local authorities pro-
vide a lens not only to how China is responding to its new communities
but also to everyday constructions of power between structures of gover-
nance and international migrant communities. Increasingly aware that the
growing diversity of Guan Ren was emerging as a social issue, different
sections of local government including city, sub-district and neighbour-
hood Residents’ Committee representatives and planners were involved
with developing innovative ways to build and manage the international
population. It was through these discussions and the development and
implementation of what became known locally as ‘The Guan Ren
approach’ to community management that international migration inter-
acted with, and helped shape, everyday urban governance. The grassroots
approach to migration management that emerged was conducted through
an appeal to foreigner ‘integration’ and ‘self-governance’; a quite dramati-
cally new approach in the China context. While, the Guan Ren project was
acknowledged locally as an example of community innovation, the chapter
reveals how, in reality, it had varying levels of success in achieving its aim
to create a service and administrative platform for ‘foreigner management’
in urban China.
Throughout this volume, there remains a common thread about the
importance of language in the study and experience of migration. The
subjects of the research presented in this volume have no collective noun
that they wore comfortably. The term ‘expatriate’ is fraught with connota-
tions of a previous era, of colonial, corporate, or diplomatic postings with
a defined time span, often within contexts of racialised (white) privilege
(Lehmann 2014; Leonard 2010). Likewise, the term ‘migrant’ as a self-­
defining term would also sit uneasily with the research participants. Most,
if not all, see themselves as temporarily in China, despite some aiming to
stay long term (see Haugen) and some unintentionally residing in a state
of ‘permanent impermanence’ (Lehmann 2014 and see Kawashima, this
volume). Unlike in other countries, foreign arrivals to China rarely, if ever,
aim for citizenship. To become a Chinese citizen is a goal which is both
legally unattainable and, oftentimes at least, considered undesirable.
Terminology the research participants commonly used to describe
16 P. LEONARD AND A. LEHMANN

themselves includes ‘laowai’ (outsider) or ‘foreigner’, used as a marker to


separate themselves culturally and ethnically from the local Chinese popu-
lation. This lack of a comfortable self-defining language is indicative of a
sense of transience and vulnerability non-Chinese people experience dur-
ing their lives in China. This volume seeks to initiate a conversation to
situate such groups within broader migration studies discourse and as
such, we use the word ‘migrant’—despite its rather uneasy fit for those
who do not position themselves by this term and who are often imperma-
nent, diverse, and transient. We hope that, by using the language of migra-
tion, the studies presented here can contribute to consideration of the
implications of China as an emerging land of both outward and inward
mobilities. Our aim is that this volume acts as a seed for discussion about
how international immigration into China may be legitimately contextual-
ised within wider debates about shifting global migration patterns and
experiences.
Together, the four sections of the book bring together issues of dias-
pora, social cohesion, citizenship, race and race relations, multicultural-
ism, identity, gender and class, space, and political and social change.
Furthermore, these chapters challenge us to rethink some of our com-
monly held assumptions about global migration including the role of
national borders, the nature of privilege, and the everyday vulnerabilities
that cut across contemporary migrant lives. The chapters in this volume
argue that migration—whether skilled or unskilled, privileged or unprivi-
leged—is not a decontextualised reaction to economic forces and social
events. Instead, the experience of mobility plays an integral role in creative
processes and pushes forward newness into the world.

Notes
1. Chinese Communist Party slogan, Brady 2003: 1.
2. See Conway and Leonard (2014) for a fuller discussion of this category.

References
Benson, M. (2011) The British in Rural France: Lifestyle Migration and the
Ongoing Quest for a Better Way of Life. Manchester, Manchester University
Press.
Benson, M. and O’Reilly, K. (2009) Lifestyle Migration: Expectations, Aspirations
and Experiences. Farnham, Ashgate.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
BILIBID.
As we are going to press, there comes to hand a little pamphlet
describing the industries and production of Bilibid.
Why not send our wardens who desire to do things to Bilibid?
Perhaps, it would be better to send our legislators, who after
observing the practical achievements of Bilibid may be induced to
authorize our wardens to inaugurate a sound industrial policy.
Where is Bilibid? Take the train for San Francisco, engage passage
on some leviathan of the deep and get off probably at the second
station which is Manila. Thence it is a short excursion to Bilibid, a trip
taken by twenty thousand visitors in a single year, not to mention
those who take involuntary trips thither.
Forty buildings, seventeen acres of ground, plan of main building like
Eastern Penitentiary, one of the best ever constructed if we consider
continual inspection as an essential factor. 2800 prisoners there; as
many others in prisons elsewhere in the islands but all co-ordinated
under a central administration.
The great aim is to prepare the inmates for “honorable position in the
community upon their release.”
The men work and play. We enumerate some of the industries.

1. Manufacture and repair of carriages, wagons, carts, trucks,


trailers, etc.
2. Household and Office Furniture made of mahogany and other
native beautiful woods.
3. Concrete work, construction of buildings.
4. Rattan and bamboo furniture. The famous fan-back chair.
5. Hand-wrought articles in silver, gold and other metals; shell-
work, horn specialties.
6. Tailoring. Service uniforms.
7. Steam laundry. All the work for the inside and a “considerable
civilian trade.”
8. Embroidery, lace making, crochet organized for the female
department.

Output per annum $350,000


Profit for the government 100,000
There are two penal colonies on large tracts of land, on one of which
the 1200 colonists practically have a government of their own.
The San Remon Farm is where the non-Christian convicts from
Moroland are confined. These war-like people have admirable
qualities when treated properly, and three-fourths of the inmates are
at work on the extensive farm without the presence of an armed
guard. Here is found the model prison of the Orient. “Built of
reinforced concrete, with grilled walls, dormitories, shower baths,
and with every modern feature for the comfort, health and
reformation of prisoners confined there, it has proved a wonderful
educational institution for the Moro.” The entire credit for this building
and the admirable system is due to the genius and sagacity of the
former governor, General John J. Pershing.
EMPLOYMENT OF PRISONERS FOR
THE GOVERNMENT.
Early in last July, a very earnest assemblage of wardens and
superintendents of prisons, and members of the American Prison
Association held a conference in Washington with a view of
mobilizing the prison industries so as to be helpful to the government
in these times of scarcity of labor.
There were forty delegates in attendance, mainly appointed by the
Governors of twenty-two States.
After discussions lasting for several sessions, the Conference was
unanimous in making certain recommendations.

1. Already the penal institutions possess enormous acreage. If the


government will accept the product, the crops may be greatly
increased. Over a half million acres are available and 75,000
workers.
2. In many States, where the law permits, selected inmates can be
paroled to labor for farmers at reasonable wages. Extensive
development of this method is possible.
3. Many of the prisons support industries the outcome of which
may be very serviceable. Among the chief industrial products
are socks, shirts, underwear, blankets, mattresses, boots and
shoes, overalls, harness, and army and navy equipment.
4. The executive order of 1905, providing that no prison-made
goods shall be purchased by the National Government, ought at
once to be rescinded.
5. “We are convinced that a very large majority of the inmates of
our prisons and reformatories are ready and earnestly desirous
of ‘doing their bit’ for the country.”
To accomplish these results, a bill has been introduced in the U. S.
Senate (S. 3076) and in the House of Representatives (H. R. 7353)
whose purpose is to utilize the labor of Federal and other prisoners
in manufacturing government supplies.
The prices paid are to be the market prices current in same locality
for same commodities.
The hours of labor are to be the same as the time prevalent in the
same vicinity for the same sort of labor.
The same rate of wages is to be paid to the prisoners, subject to the
necessary deduction for maintenance.
This means that the goods purchased by the United States from the
prisons shall be made by labor which is on a par with outside labor.
No goods are to be purchased by the Government from “any private
person or companies using the labor” of convicts. Thus the
Government utters its protest against any form of “contract labor.”
The Acting Committee of The Pennsylvania Prison Society has
urged the early passage of this bill.
A FEAST OF REASON AND A FLOW
OF SOUL.
Within the last two years, in the Empire State, some prison officials
and students of penology have occasionally met for an informal
conference on methods of penal management. No reporters attend,
they have no Secretary, there are no restrictive features, the
discussions are frank, free and open. They have been held at some
one of the institutions, and so the visitors have opportunity to
observe from the inside the methods and employments of the prison
where the meetings may be held.
Those who attend these conferences are the guests of the institution
which is visited. They have been held at the Elmira Reformatory, at
Great Meadow, at Blackwell’s Island and possibly at one or two other
prisons.
Last summer it was the good fortune of the Secretary to have the
privilege of attending the meeting held at Great Meadow at
Comstock, N. Y. Perhaps there were fifty ladies and gentlemen in
attendance, among whom were Jas. M. Carter, Superintendent of
Prisons for the State of New York; Warden Trombly, of Danemora;
William George, founder of the school which bears his name; ex-
Warden Geo. W. Kirchwey, O. F. Lewis, Secretary of the New York
Prison Association; Miss Katherine B. Davis, Commissioner of
Parole and Probation, New York City, and various officials connected
with the New York City prisons and other penal institutions of the
State.
Arriving at Comstock the guests were met by our genial host,
Warden Homer, whose conveyances soon brought us to the
Administration Building. There were excursions about the big farm
and the various buildings. Bounteous meals were served under a
tent on the grounds of the shady lawn. The ladies were lodged in the
administration building. It was at one time supposed that the
gentlemen would occupy cells in the regular prison department, but
for some reason this very interesting proposition was relinquished,
and a garage was converted into an airy dormitory for the
accommodation of the gentlemen. Prisoners brought iron bedsteads
and bedding and nothing was omitted for the comfort of the guests.
A shower bath was improvised, and in the morning the barber and
the shoe polisher appeared with all the proper accoutrements.
The guests arrived on Friday morning and departed the next
afternoon. There were three informal meetings, at which a variety of
penological subjects were both lightly and profoundly discussed.
Proceedings are not to be published, hence there is no feeling of
restraint.
The writer trusts he will not violate the confidence of his friends if he
may refer to one or two points in the discussion.
One of the prisoners on the farm—by the way an ex-member of the
New York State Legislature—addressed the company in emphatic
recommendation of The Honor System as employed by Warden
Homer. He stated that the prisoners there did not care for any
extension of the self-government plan. He was sure that Warden
Homer could govern them better than they could govern themselves.
They were as comfortable as any persons restrained within limits
could be supposed to be. They knew they could get a “square deal”
from Warden Homer, and they did not care to shift the responsibility
of government to any other shoulders.
An enthusiastic supporter of the self-government system was rather
inclined to look with disfavor on a benevolent despotism, such as the
system now in vogue at Great Meadow. The persons so governed
lost initiative and the power of thinking for themselves. They had no
opportunity of profiting by their own mistakes. They became mere
puppets, and were not learning the practical lessons which would fit
them for the life outside.
The company listened with interest to an expert dietitian who spoke
of the crude and ragged methods of preparing food in the penal
institutions. Sufficient food was provided as a rule, but it was ruined
in the preparation.
Mentally, morally, socially and gastronomically, we may state, the
meeting was a success.
Last October we enjoyed a similar conference at Sleighton Farm,
Pa., and we know of no reason why the experiment may not be
repeated in this commonwealth.
The Secretary is willing to suggest that there are in Pennsylvania
several country clubs where such a conference would be welcomed.
He is willing to mention The Reformatory at Huntingdon with its
splendid farm, the beautiful campus of the School at Morganza, the
Workhouse at Holmesburg and Hoboken, and the magnificent State
Prison Farm at Bellefonte. Perhaps Warden John Francies would
prefer to receive us when his institution is nearer completion.
When the invitation comes from any of the institutions mentioned,
there will be a response.
A. H. V.
Utilization of Prison Labor.
BY H. H. HART

(Suggestions to West Virginia)

With the tremendous demand for war supplies in addition to the


ordinary demand for domestic uses; with the cessation of
immigration which for 150 years has poured a steady stream of fresh
laborers into the United States; and with the immediate diversion of a
million men, and perhaps four or five millions, to the trade of war, we
are confronted with a scarcity of labor which compels us to utilize
every available worker to the limit of his reasonable capacity.
Able-bodied men, working under skilled direction and thorough
system, without loss of time from drink, strikes or voluntary holidays,
ought to earn more than their board and clothes. In the present state
of the labor market it is possible for prisoners, under proper
circumstances, to earn two dollars per day. In Vermont prisoners
from the common jail are earning two dollars per day on the adjacent
farms. In Windham county, Connecticut, prisoners are actually
earning $2.50 per day at common labor, and at Wilmington,
Delaware, short-term prisoners are earning $1.20 per day....
In those counties where the jail prisoners are not employed, we
would suggest the adoption of the Vermont plan under which the
jailer finds employment for individual prisoners with a nearby farmer
who pays for their labor at the ordinary rate for free labor. The
prisoner sleeps at the jail and has his breakfast and supper there—
two good hearty meals. He goes out in the morning, carrying a
dinner bucket, and returns at night. If the distance is too great the
farmer sends for him by team or automobile. If the prisoner fails to
make good or tries to run away, the farmer notifies the sheriff
promptly, who sends a deputy sheriff after him. The reports from
Vermont, Connecticut, Delaware and Wisconsin, where this plan
prevails, show very few escapes. No guard is necessary, as the
farmer looks after the prisoners, and thus the overhead charges are
done away with.
Thomas J. Tynan, of the Colorado State Penitentiary, wrote recently
as follows: “We are now doing work to the value of $2.50 per day by
prisoners on the highway at a cost to the taxpayers of the State not
to exceed 40 cents per day. The State could well afford to pay a little
wage besides the good time allowance.”
The difference between the old system and the new system lies
chiefly in the manner of dealing with the prisoners. Under the new
plan an appeal is made to the prisoner’s honor and good will. After
being tested within the walls, he is permitted to join a company of
workers outside the wall on his promise of good work and good
behavior, and on his promise not to run away. The prisoners work
without chains, and the guards in many cases carry no firearms.
Testimony comes from Ohio, from Oregon, from Colorado, from
Wisconsin, from Connecticut and from Canada that prisoners—even
low-grade prisoners and negroes—respond surprisingly to this
treatment; that escapes are few, and that there is a great
improvement in the industry and efficiency of the prisoners.
The incentive to the prisoners to make good is partly an increased
allowance for good time; partly, in some States, a small cash wage;
partly the desire of the prisoners for the freer life outside the walls,
and partly a response to the confidence shown in them by their
officers.
Success in employing prisoners on the roads by modern methods
depends first upon finding a road manager who is interested in his
men and believes in the possibility of exciting their interest and
loyalty for the work. It depends, second, upon creating such living
and working conditions as will keep the men fit for a good day’s
work. That means good food, good cooking, comfortable sleeping
quarters, opportunity for proper recreation, good laundry work and
bathing facilities, and, above all, the treatment of the prisoners by
their officers as reasonable human beings.
The plan of roadside camps, portable cages, chain gangs, ignorant
and cruel guards armed with shotguns and discretionary power will
not secure cheerful and efficient work.
THE INDIANA PENAL FARM.
[This article, by Henry A. Montgomery, Staff
Correspondent of the Detroit News, was incited by the
plan of Detroit to build a large and expensive House of
Correction. What other communities or States are doing
will be told by Mr. Montgomery.]
Greencastle, Ind., March 13.—“Reform them? No, you don’t
reform them. You can’t change a man’s real nature. But lots of them
are not naturally bad. We get the alcohol out of their systems, give
them all they can eat, make them keep regular hours and do a man’s
work, and the good in them has a chance to show itself.”
That is the way Charles E. Talkington, superintendent of the Indiana
State Farm, defined reformation.
The farm is situated in some of the most beautiful farming country in
western Indiana, about midway between Indianapolis and Terre
Haute. The site selected for the colony is particularly well adapted to
the needs of a penal institution, being rich in its deposits of
limestone, having plenty of tillable soil and considerable timber. The
beautiful hills and deep ravines lend the tract beauty and make it
possible for the landscape gardener with little effort to make it look
like the estate of a wealthy landowner. Although general farming is
engaged in, the products of the garden form so great a share of the
subsistence of the men that this has developed into one of the most
important features of the work. When present plans have been
realized there will be at least 160 acres devoted exclusively to
gardening.
It’s an unusual sight that one encounters on arriving at the top of the
long hill where is built the little village, the home of the 700 social
misfits. Two rows of long, squat frame buildings form the “street” of
this strange town. Nobody would guess from the appearance of the
buildings what they were intended for. They resemble the Billy
Sunday tabernacle type of structure. There is nothing attractive
about them, but they are temporary quarters and they are serving
their purpose well.
The first of these buildings is the office and sleeping apartments of
the officers. It is here that the prisoner is first taken. His history is
recorded, he is subjected to a medical examination, his clothes are
fumigated and stored away for his use when he is released, and he
is given a bath, shave and haircut, and a suit of clothes. The clothes
consist of the heavy working jacket and trousers, underclothing and
corduroy cap.
The first interview with the prisoner is considered important. The
assistant superintendent gives him detailed instructions as to his
own conduct and tells him with great care about the theories that are
being worked out. The number of men who, immediately following
this talk, are placed on their honor and given as much freedom as it
is possible to give is remarkable. Few of them violate the trust.
Often the man sent to the farm for six months walks forth from the
office, strolls over to the recreation room to await his work
assignment and never feels for one minute the influence of restraint,
except, perhaps, the realization that in the watch towers placed at
various points of vantage about the farm there is stationed a man—a
fellow prisoner—whose duty it is to notify headquarters if any
prisoner starts to leave the grounds.
The prisoner eats in a dining room and sleeps in a dormitory which
are kept spotlessly clean, and there is neither bar on the window nor
lock on the door. Each dormitory is occupied by about 200 men, and
one officer is all that is needed to maintain order.
“We do not say our plan is perfect,” said Superintendent Talkington,
“nor do we make any great claims about our ability to reform a man
during the short time he is here. But we do say this is the best
manner yet devised for handling them. We take a man from the
gutter, and at least make it possible for him to improve. We give him
health, and direction enough to get him into some employment at
which he can earn his living. Although we refuse to put forth any
claims about how much good we do for the man, we at least know
that we do not injure him. And that is more than can be said for any
jail or prison. We aren’t running any school for crime here. We do
know that. We also know that we can make this institution self-
supporting and a means of revenue for the State. What more can
you ask?
“The wide-open policy of freedom, I believe, has been carried to the
extreme here. Although the great majority of men can be handled
and trusted in absolute freedom, there are, in a population of 700
men, some who can never be given liberty. There is need for not
more than 50 cells. Any farm colony ought to have them even if the
cells are never used. Even so, we are getting along very nicely
without them, and it shows to what great extent this policy can be
carried successfully.
“We never had even punishment cells until a few days ago when four
were completed. We aren’t going to have to use them much, either.
Confinement on bread and water is the only form of punishment
permitted in this colony—no flogging, no dungeons, no ball and
chain, no stripes.
“We have prisoners living down on the lower end of the farm working
under a prisoner-foreman. We see them only when we are making
the weekly round of inspection.”
One could not help but feel, in discussion with Mr. Talkington, that
one was listening to a practical man who is anything but the dreamer
or idealist usually found advocating so revolutionary a plan as the
one on which the superintendent is working. He made no claims to
super-knowledge in the handling of men. He had no illusions about
the matter. He knew the faults of the plan and he knew the virtues.
When he undertook the present work, his only assets were his
experience as a farmer and school teacher.
“I feel,” said Mr. Talkington, “that your officials, before spending more
than a million dollars on the old type of prison, should see this farm
and the one at Guelph, Ont. I’m confident they would change their
plans. This may be a new thing in this country, but it is not untried in
the old. The most famous of the European farm colonies is the one
at Witzwil, Switzerland. It has solved all the problems of handling
men, it pays thousands of dollars annually into the treasury of the
canton Berne and there has been no trouble experienced in
competition with free labor.
“The farm colony has come to America to stay, and I hope Detroit
won’t take any action which will postpone for perhaps half a century
an improvement they are entitled to now.”
One of the bad features of Indiana’s temporary arrangement is the
lack of opportunity to segregate prisoners into classes or groups.
The dormitories are too large and the facilities for recreation are very
limited.
“The men should be divided into smaller groups,” said the
superintendent, “and I believe the recreation room should be a part
of the dormitory. I would not place more than 25 to 50 men in each
group. That would give a chance to segregate the youths from the
older men and permit keeping apart the more dangerous type from
the man who is here on some comparatively trifling charge.
“Another of our greatest needs is the establishment of industries to
supplement the work on the farm. We are going to get these. There
should be a furniture factory, a canning factory, brick yard or other
suitable industries where the men can be worked when weather
conditions are bad or outside work slack.”
The greatest factor in the maintaining of discipline is the use of the
honor system. There are good jobs on the farm and bad ones. And
the good jobs go to the men who have the best records and have
shown their ability to take positions of responsibility.
“You can’t tell me that you can run any prison with any such sort of
discipline,” a prison superintendent recently told me. “There are
some men who must be strung up and there are some who must be
spanked. If we didn’t resort to extreme methods at times we would
have a riot on our hands all the time.”
The best answer to this is found in the record of the Indiana farm.
There hasn’t been a strike or a serious riot since the institution was
founded. There are no guards standing or sitting around idle. The
guards are working foremen who perform as much actual labor as
any prisoner. The employed guards have guns in their pocket, but
the guns are never used and some of them aren’t even loaded.
There is a provision in the State law of Indiana which permits the
drafting from the penitentiaries of trusties to take jobs as foremen,
sentinels and lookouts. Of course, this probably could not be done in
Detroit, because the house of correction is a city institution. But in
Indiana it assists materially in keeping down the payroll. It makes this
difference—the farm colony at Occoquan, Va., has a payroll of about
$5000 a month; the Indiana institution gets along with $1700. And
the two institutions are very much alike.—From The Delinquent,
March, 1917.
THE CRIMINAL CODE OF
[A]

PENNSYLVANIA.
William E. Mikell, Member of State Commission to Revise
the Criminal Code.

Perhaps, in the true sense of the term, there is no criminal “code” in


Pennsylvania. The whole body of the criminal law has never been
reduced to a written code in this state in the sense in which this has
been done in some of the States of the Union in which jurisdictions
there are no crimes except those specifically prescribed. * * *
At the common law, crimes were classified as felonies and
misdemeanors. Without going into nice historical questions we can
fairly say that the term “felony” was applied to the more heinous
crimes, “misdemeanors” to the more venial ones. In the statutory law
of both England and of this country these terms have in general
been similarly employed. In the Pennsylvania code the legislature
has in the majority of cases in defining each crime designated the
crime a felony or a misdemeanor; and following the general principle
of the common law, affixed the stigma of “felony” to the graver
crimes. Viewing the code, however, as a whole, there is an utter lack
of principle in the grading of crimes as felonies or misdemeanors,
either according to the moral heinousness of the offense, or the
severity of the punishment.
Bigamy, with its attendant disgrace and illegitimacy, is a
misdemeanor, while embezzlement by a servant is a felony. For a
clerk or agent to embezzle—by the code called larceny—is a felony;
for a banker, trustee or guardian to embezzle, is only a
misdemeanor. * * *
Administering a narcotic with intent to commit larceny, is felony;
assault and battery endangering the life of an infant, is a
misdemeanor. Blackmailing is only a misdemeanor, while receiving
stolen goods is a felony. If one in the heat of a fight, intending to
disable or maim his antagonist, should cut him ever so slightly, he is
guilty of a felony, but, if he “on purpose, and of malice aforethought
by lying in wait, shall unlawfully cut out the tongue, put out an eye,
cut off the nose * * * or cut off any limb” of his victim, he commits
only a misdemeanor. Also if he “voluntarily, maliciously and of
purpose bite off the * * * limb or member of another,” he is guilty of a
misdemeanor. Truly, there must have been giants in those days. The
effect of these two sections is to make it a graver offense to attempt
mayhem and fail, than to succeed.

The Grading of Penalties.

The work of the commissioners who framed the Code of 1860 shows
an utter lack of any consistent theory not only of grading the crimes
as felonies and misdemeanors, but also in grading the punishment
fixed for the various crimes. It may not be easy to do this in all cases.
Persons may intelligently differ as to whether perjury should be more
seriously punished than assault and battery, and whether larceny or
bigamy be deserving of the greater penalty. But it is difficult to see
why embezzlement by a consignee or factor should be punished with
five years’ imprisonment and embezzlement by a person
transporting the goods to the factor should be punished by one
year’s imprisonment. * * *
Under the Act of 1860, having in possession tools for the
counterfeiting of copper coin is punished by six years’ imprisonment,
while by the next section the punishment for actually making
counterfeit copper coin is only three years, though it cannot be made
without the tools to make it. * * *
The distinction just mentioned is, however, no stranger than that
made by the code between a councilman on the one hand and a
judge on the other, in the provisions against bribery. Section 48 of
the Act of 1860 provides that if any judge * * * shall accept a bribe,
he shall be fined not more than $1000 and be imprisoned for not
more than five years. But by Section 8 of the Act of 1874, a
councilman who accepts a bribe may be fined $10,000, ten times as
much as a judge, and be imprisoned the same number of years—
five years. The statute also provides that the councilman shall be
incapable of holding any place of profit or trust in this
Commonwealth thereafter. But the convicted judge is placed under
no such disability.

Relations of Fine to Imprisonment.

In the case of almost every crime denounced by the code fine and
imprisonment are associated. In most cases the penalty provided is
fine and imprisonment, in some it is fine or imprisonment. In a few
cases imprisonment alone without a fine is prescribed, and in a few
others it is a fine alone without imprisonment. We seek in vain for
any principle on which the fine is omitted, where it is omitted; or for a
principle on which it is inflicted in addition to imprisonment in some
cases, and as an alternative to imprisonment in others. Thus the
penalty for exhibiting indecent pictures on a wall in a public place is a
fine of $300, but no imprisonment, while by the same act the drawing
of such pictures on the same wall carries a fine of $500 and one
year’s imprisonment. Manslaughter carries a fine of $1000 as well as
imprisonment for twelve years, but train robbery and murder in the
second degree involve no fine, but fifteen and twenty years in prison
respectively. It cannot be the length of the imprisonment that does
away with the fine in this latter case, for the crime of aiding in
kidnapping may be punished with twenty-five years in prison, but
also has a fine of $5000.
More striking still, perhaps, is the lack of any relation between the
amount of the fine and the length of the imprisonment provided in the
code. In the case of some crimes the fine is small and the
imprisonment short, as in blasphemy, which is punished by a fine of
$100 and three months in prison, extortion and embracery punished
with $500 and one year. In a few the fine is large and the
imprisonment long, as in accepting bribes by councilmen, $10,000
and five years, and malicious injury to railroads, $10,000 and ten
years. But in others the fine is small while the imprisonment is long
and in others the fine large and the imprisonment short.
Incomplete Crimes.

It is a general principle of criminal jurisprudence that “incomplete


crimes,” as they are called, such as attempt, and conspiracy to
commit a crime, should not be punished as severely as the full,
completed crime. It was on this principle that at common law an
attempt to commit even the gravest felony, such as murder, was only
a misdemeanor. Other codes maintain this principle. * * *
The Pennsylvania code has no general section on attempts, but in a
haphazard manner, in providing for some crimes, provides for the
attempt to commit the same, and in some cases has no provision for
such attempts. A study of those cases in which provision for
punishing the attempt is made, shows an entire absence of any
theory or principle in assessing the punishment. Thus the penalty for
the attempt to commit arson is the same as for the crime of arson
itself; for the attempt to commit robbery, the same as for the
completed robbery; but the attempt to commit murder is not
punished with the same penalty as murder, viz.: death, or twenty
years’ imprisonment, but by seven years’ imprisonment only.

Instances of Lack of Co-ordination in Drafting.

Two strikers separately determine to wreck a passenger train: one


removes a rail from the road over which a train is scheduled to pass;
another cuts the telegraph wire to prevent the train dispatcher from
stopping the train from running into a wreck. The first striker would
come within the terms of Section 7 of the Act of 1911 and could be
sentenced to pay a fine of $10,000 and suffer imprisonment for ten
years; the second man would come within the terms of Section 147
of the Act of 1860 and could not be fined more than $500 or
imprisoned more than twelve months. * * *
If the executor made way with a horse belonging to the estate, his
maximum imprisonment would be still two years; but if the butler
made way with another horse he might receive ten years as a
penalty. If a mule would serve the butler’s purpose as well as a horse
he had better take the mule, for then he could not be sentenced for
more than three years; if the mule were not swift enough, however,
he might choose an automobile, for the maximum imprisonment for
stealing an automobile is the same as that for larceny of the mule,
being less than one-third of that for larceny of a horse.
If the driver of a public “coachee” by “wanton and furious driving or
racing” unintentionally breaks a chicken’s leg he may be punished by
five years’ imprisonment, the same punishment provided for
attempted rape, for mayhem, for counterfeiting, and for robbery; but
if the driver of a taxicab is guilty of the same assault on a member of
the feathered tribe he is not even indictable. If the driver of this
“coachee,” while so driving, should accidentally inflict the slightest
personal injury on another, he would be liable to greater punishment
than if he deliberately stabbed that other with intent to maim him, or
wilfully and maliciously exploded dynamite under him, thus doing him
serious bodily harm. This violates one of the cardinal principles of
criminal jurisprudence, viz., that crimes of negligence are not so
grave as crimes done with deliberate intent, a principle recognized in
other parts of the code in providing for murder and involuntary
manslaughter. * * *
The writer has attempted to point out in this paper some of the more
glaring and interesting defects in the code. He has by no means
exhausted them. There is a great need for a complete revision of the
code. It is a jumble of inconsistent theories; a great many sections
are badly drawn, others are obsolete; many are inconsistent, many
are in conflict; there is much overlapping due to different acts having
been passed at different times covering in part the same subject
matter, so that it cannot be told whether a given crime should be
punished under one section or another prescribing a different
punishment.

Governor Brumbaugh has appointed the following on the


Commission to revise the Criminal Code of the Commonwealth:
Edwin M. Abbott, Chairman, Philadelphia; Wm. E. Mikell, Secretary,
Philadelphia; George C. Bradshaw, Pittsburgh; Clarence E.
Coughlin, Wilkes-Barre; Rex N. Mitchell, Punxsutawney.
FOOTNOTES:
[A]From an article by Mr. Mikell in the University of Pennsylvania
Law Review, January, 1917. The article clearly indicates the
urgent need of revision of our criminal code.
AMERICAN PRISON ASSOCIATION.
ATTENDANCE.

The meetings of the American Prison Association in 1917 were held


in New Orleans, November 19-23. Outside of the State of Louisiana,
the registration of delegates and attenders amounted to 261, of
whom seven were from Canada, one from Mexico, one from Cuba
and one from Guatemala. One hundred and thirty-seven registered
from Louisiana. Outside of this State, Massachusetts enrolled the
largest number, thirty-two being accredited to the Bay State. Then
followed New York, with twenty-nine, and Pennsylvania was third
with twenty-two, of whom nine were Official Delegates. It must not be
forgotten that there were many attenders at these meetings who had
not received appointment as Official Delegates, but who were active
and welcome participators in the discussions. In 1916 and 1917, the
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania has been well represented, but for
several years previous the attendance from the Keystone State had,
from a numerical point of view, been rather insignificant.

THE PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS.

Dr. David C. Peyton, Superintendent of the Indiana Reformatory at


Jeffersonville, ably officiated as presiding officer of the various
sessions of the Association. He is evidently a believer in strict
discipline administered by the officials who are legally appointed as
the guardians of the offender, yet no one who visits the institution
over which he presides, would assert that the regulations are harsh
or unreasonable. His view of the Honor System would not involve
government by the inmates.
“In prison management there have developed two colossal evils.
One was peculiar to the past and the other in a measure
characterizes the present. Most of the evils that are associated with
prison work have come from these two roots. They are antipodal as
east and west. They are cruelty and sentimentality. As the first was
the child of ignorance, the second springs from half knowledge and
is not the less reprehensible. True reform will come, not by a
softening and relaxation in prison discipline, not by imputing to
criminals qualities which their whole activities have proven them to
lack and the very absence of which is the cause of their
incarceration, not by making their pathway smoother and easier, nor
yet by touching it with the magic of romance. If a little of the leaven
of common sense were allowed to permeate the situation it seems to
me that the clouds in our pathway would lift somewhat.
“Of course cruelty, the other bête-noir, is only named to be
condemned, and thanks to our even half-knowledge it has no place
in modern prisons except in isolated spots. But I doubt if ever cruelty
was any more cruel than a regime which threatens to become
popular today. It seems to me that prisons should be run for the
purpose of training men for sane living. If that is true, then they
should in fact train these men for sane living.
“A modern prison should be a beehive of industrial activity and
should be more than self-supporting. Indeed, men should be able to
serve their sentences and earn enough overtime money during their
terms to support their dependents—in part at least. A trade should
be taught when practicable, but even more important than a trade is
the idea of inculcating industrious habits. It is not a misfortune for
men to have to labor, but it is a blessing both for them and for us.
“Discipline should be strict but not arbitrary. The rules should be
based on experience and should be obviously sound.
“Punishment has a place in prison, but it should be logical; should,
as far as possible, flow as a natural consequence from the
transgression according to the pedagogical rule of Spencer.
“The industrial training should be correlated with the didactic
instruction and the prison library. The three should form the tripartite
educative force of the institution.”

THE HONOR SYSTEM.


As was naturally to be expected, the so-called Honor System
received a large share of attention, especially in the Wardens’
meetings. The Wardens generally are opposed to that feature of the
Honor System which involves placing the discipline to any great
extent in the hands of the convicts. The experiments of Mr. Osborne
at Auburn, Sing Sing and Portsmouth are regarded as sporadic
efforts largely affected by the personality of a masterful, though
sentimental, empiricist. Men who have never governed themselves
should not be elected to govern one another. Mr. Erskine, of
Connecticut, argued that it was wrong to base any system on
emotional appeal. “Twenty per cent. of the men in prison are entirely
bad and vicious; 20 per cent. would wield a good influence if they
had the opportunity, and the remaining 60 per cent. could be swayed
by either the good or the bad element.”
On the other hand it was stoutly contended that the prison was the
proper place for men to learn to govern themselves. Necessarily they
were confined to a limited area, and still subject to watchful care by
big-hearted, efficient advisers. Let them learn that discipline in life is
an essential feature of any community. Let them learn this lesson by
personal experimentation. Thus they may recover some sense of
self-respect. They will rejoin the outer world with some measure of
responsibility. They will return to freedom with a different
understanding of life.
Dr. Bernard Glueck, director of the psychological clinic at Sing Sing,
asserted that in general prison officials, through limitations to their
work, were not fully qualified to pass judgment on the subject, and
had not availed themselves of opportunities to carry out a
comprehensive system of self-government. He stated that such a
system had proven to be distinctly successful at Preston, California,
and asked Mr. Calvin Derrick, the founder of the School of Industry
at Preston, to present some account of this institution.
Mr. Derrick informed the Association that this California school has
developed its honor system to the point where 250 of the boys were
sent to the Sacramento fair alone, traveling through the country 250
miles, and returning without the loss of a single one. The boys have
a complete republic system of government, and conduct all of the
work of the school. A football team plays regular school and college
teams of the State, traveling without supervision.
It appeared to some of us who listened with intense interest to these
discussions that the difference in sentiment was rather one of degree
than of principle. Wherever any privileges are allowed and wherever
the trusty system is permitted, there is involved some measure of
self-government. One warden permits the prisoners to mingle
together on the base ball field. These men are on their honor.
Another warden might say that he would allow his prisoners to play
and observe games and leave the regulation of their conduct while
on the field to the men themselves. They are still on their honor and
doubtless are aware that their regulation of conduct must meet the
approval of the warden. Suppose we allow the men to impose
penalties for minor delinquencies. The warden still exercises his
judgment on the punishment awarded. The warden governs. The
men may have more or less privileges, but they are granted by the
warden. It resolves itself into a question as to how far such privileges
may be granted. And no two wardens in the world will agree
precisely on this point.
For the last twenty years the trend has been getting away from the
brutality of the former systems, from the petty rules, from degrading
and humiliating treatment, and the avowed object of confinement has
been reiterated again and again to aim at reformation. We admit that
some wardens are more successful than others in accomplishing
desired results, and yet we must not expect them to adopt an entirely
uniform program. We must make due allowance for the personal
equation involved, for the individuality of the ruling authority. The
warden who claims that his system is perfect, and that he has
nothing more to learn, is recommended for removal.

CLINICAL WORK.

Dr. Bernard Glueck exhibited a number of charts showing much that


was deeply interesting in regard to the mentality, environment and
parentage of the criminals sent to Sing Sing.
“Sing Sing is being reorganized and rebuilt to receive all of the
criminals of New York for examination immediately after they have
been convicted. We are trying to get at the man behind the crime
rather than the crime itself. Two facts are very evident from our work.
The social fact is that 66 per cent. of the prisoners we have received
are previous offenders. The medical fact is that 59 per cent. of the
prisoners can be classified for mental diseases or mental deviation;
and thousands of this class can be treated and cured by means of
vocational training and other modern prison methods.
“Sing Sing is being remodeled so that we can devote as much as
four months to an intensive study of each prisoner who enters the
institution. From this examination we can learn which men should be
sent to the insane hospitals, which to the intensive vocational
schools, and can outline the most effective method of treatment
necessary to prepare the men for the future.
“The indeterminate sentence is essential to the proper working out of
our plans, and the criminal courts of the State are working in
harmony with this idea. Most offenders can be restored to a normal
life and good citizenship after they have finished a term under proper
treatment, and criminal judges in New York city tell us that fewer men
come before them for a second time since we have adopted the
present methods.
“It is the aim of the prison to turn the men into citizens with an
understanding. They are allowed many liberties, and are made to
take an active part in community life in prison. They have their own
social organization, a system of self-government, including even a
charitable society. In their charity work they aid prisoners who are
leaving the prison, make it possible for poor people to visit
imprisoned relatives, send the bodies of prisoners home for burial,
and many other things of that nature.”

PRISONERS AND THE WAR.

Some problems arising as a direct result of the war received serious


attention. There was the question of additional food production by
prison labor; whether paroled men shall enter the army or navy; and
whether conditional pardons may be granted, contingent upon
military service.
Some delegates asserted that a general restlessness was noticed
among most prisoners. Many of them are exceedingly anxious to get
into the war, and in some States prisoners are being paroled so that
they may enter the army or navy. Prison officials know that many of
their wards are fit for military service just as well as they are aware
that other prisoners are unfit. After prolonged discussion of the
subject, the Wardens’ Association unanimously adopted the
following resolution:
“Resolved, That the Wardens’ Association of the American Prison
Association suggest to and request of the President of the United
States the modification of paragraph 849 of the Regulations of the
Army and paragraph 3686 of the Articles for the Government of the
Navy of the United States so as to permit the enlistment in the
military and naval forces of the United States of men who, in the
judgment of the proper military and naval authorities, are physically,
mentally and morally qualified, despite the fact that such persons
may have been convicted of the offenses set forth in the regulations
and articles above referred to and imprisoned therefor, upon their
being duly and honorably paroled or discharged from such
imprisonment.”
At Guelph, Ontario, the great prison has been practically
depopulated. The prisoners have gone to war, and the institution has
been taken over as a hospital for convalescents returned from the
scenes of war. The Superintendent, Dr. J. T. Gilmour, declared that it
is only a step from prisoner to patriot.
“We have learned a great deal about prisoners during the three
years we have been in war. We have learned that the prisoner’s
sense of patriotism is not dead because he is behind the bars; that
he is just as anxious to serve his country as the man who is not
being punished, and if given an opportunity the chances are that he
will make a good soldier. It has come to my notice that men have
exchanged prison uniforms for army uniforms in three hours after
their discharge from prison.”
He made the further statement that thousands of men had been
released from Canadian prisons to permit them to serve in the army,
and thousands of others were “doing their bit” by making hospital
supplies during their imprisonment.

PRISONERS CONDEMNED TO SLAVERY.

In at least two Southern States, the infamous lease system, whereby


prisoners are leased for an annual stipend to work in the mines or in
the turpentine forests or in other work, prevails. Isadore Shapiro, a
member of the Legislature from Alabama, and President of the
Committee on Prisons, vigorously lambasted the government of
Alabama for tolerating and continuing such venal disgrace. The
Alabama legislature had made an effort to abolish the lease system
but the governor had interposed so as to prolong the infamy. The
prisoners could profitably and healthfully be put to work on the State
farms but instead they are offered for sale to the highest bidder, and
employed in mills, coal mines, lumber and turpentine camps. All of
the women prisoners in one county were leased recently for the term
of two years at the rate of fifteen cents a day. Mr. Shapiro produced
a leather strap six feet long and an inch and a half wide with which
prisoners are flogged.
Recently in the State of Florida 598 prisoners were leased at an
average of $360 per head by the year. It is a fact that most prisoners
who work in the turpentine industry are so broken down in health
after a few years that for the remainder of their days they are unfit for
any manual employment. Of course it is granted that this work must
be done, but we insist that it must be done under humane
regulations. We have yet to learn of any leasing corporation or
individual that has treated his serfs with merciful consideration.
Georgia, after a long fight, has entirely repudiated the system.
The Association, while insisting that employment should be given to
prisoners, unanimously adopted a resolution condemning in the
strongest terms a system whereby men and women are sold into
bondage in order to enhance the revenue of the State.
THE INDETERMINATE SYSTEM.

There is no longer any debate about the Indeterminate Sentence.


The principle is written upon the statutes of nearly every State of the
Union, tho in a debilitated and illogical form in the Commonwealth of
Pennsylvania. Amos W. Butler, Secretary Board of Charities in
Indiana, in an address delivered in one of the churches declared that
we had brought very little understanding to bear upon our treatment
of criminals until recent years. He compared our knowledge of
smallpox, yellow fever and other diseases with crime and concluded
that we made as many blunders in considering the offender as we
formerly made in our attitude toward these mysterious and dreaded
diseases.
“Prisons are the visible signs of our failures. It is now within the
power of man to abolish many diseases from the earth, and so with
crime. Criminals are not sent to prison for punishment, as many
seem to believe, but prisons exist for the confinement of prisoners
for the safety of society and for the reform of the man or woman
there. They should, if possible, be reformed and returned to society.”
The speaker favored the indeterminate sentence. He said you would
not send a diphtheria patient to the hospital for a definite time, say
two or three weeks. Complications might appear and more time may
be required to effect a cure. The same is true of criminals. They
should be sent there until reformed, until fit to be returned.
Indiana has an indeterminate sentence law and in the past twenty
years 11,000 men and women have been released under that law.
Seventy-five per cent. of them succeeded, or made good. Prisoners
there have earned about $3,000,000 for themselves.
The absolutely indeterminate sentence is not yet in vogue in any
State. A criminal under such a sentence would be sent to prison as
to a hospital to remain till cured of his malady. Perhaps, in some
cases he would be subject to some detention as a deterrent to
others contemplating entering upon a criminal career. Specialists
would determine when he was ready to enter the community. We
may at some time adopt such a system when there are enough men
and women having the skill and training necessary to pass on the
mental and moral characteristics of such patients.
Perhaps the best form of sentence is by statutes which fix the time
for any given offense. The time for arson, for instance, may be
placed from two to twenty years. It is the function of the judge or jury
to determine whether the accused is guilty. If found guilty, the
defendant is placed in care of a judicious board of control who will
release the criminal at such time as they may deem best for him and
the community.
Judge Willis, of St. Paul, said that no physician would send a patient
to a hospital for a specified number of days or weeks, yet this very
thing is done daily by judges who send mentally and morally sick
men and women to jail. “A doctor would not presume to predict just
how many days it would take to cure a disease, but a judge daily
uses his prerogative as a diagnostician in sending morally diseased
people to jail, although the records of trials show that no two judges
think alike in the matter. * * * Society no longer tolerates vengeance
in the criminal code. The desire of intelligent people of today is to
restore the criminal to a place in society—an honorable place—and
not only to restore him, but to make him a more valuable member of
society than he was before his incarceration.”

NATIONAL PRISONERS’ AID ASSOCIATION.

This body is an auxiliary of the main organization. Two sessions


were held at which various phases of the work were earnestly
discussed.
The address of the President, Rev. James Parsons, of Minneapolis,
presented a summary of what has been accomplished, and also
some cogent reasons for the existence and maintenance of
organizations having constantly in view the rehabilitation of those
who have violated law. This address is given in another part of the
Journal.
Rev. Charles Parsons, of Des Moines, called attention to the
increase of crime in time of war. “A celebrated doctor declared that

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