Asian and Asian American Racialization through Legislative Language in the 2023 State Alien Land Bills

Abstract

This thesis analyzes how Asians and Asian Americans are racialized through the 2023 State Alien Land Bills. Previous scholarship has shown that Asians and Asian Americans are racialized through "yellow peril," "model minority myth," and "forever foreigner" tropes but little existing sociological research analyzes the usage of Asian and Asian American racial tropes in legislation and law on a national scale. The data for this thesis consists of 79 bills that were processed during the 2023 state legislative sessions which ban or restrict Chinese nationals from acquiring land, including those which were introduced in 2023 and pushed to the 2024 state legislative cycle. Through a content analysis of the bills, I found that Asians and Asian Americans are primarily racialized through the yellow peril trope of infiltration through expansion in the Alien Land Bills and colorblind racism through targets of exclusion. These methods of exclusion use historically grounded tropes of yellow peril while applying colorblind racism in contemporary anti-Asian and Asian American racial project based upon Sinophobia.