El inmigrante “indeseable”: construcción e internacionalización de una figura legal de exclusión en América Latina en la primera mitad del siglo xx

Immigration, a matter of state since the late 19th century, moved beyond the national debates of the first half of the 20th century and became a major issue at specialised international conferences in the first half of the 20th century. These transnational forums, which discussed measures to prevent the movement of individuals who might pose a threat to the security of participating nations, promoted the use of the concept of ‘undesirable’. However, it was the Pan-American conferences that gave legal weight to the term while giving the state the sovereign right to decide on immigration, even overriding the civil rights of the immigrant, as enshrined in international law. This article aims to examine the logics behind the circulation of this notion and to analyse how its use in these spaces of discussion materialised in national migration policies in Latin America. It also seeks to examine how the processes of internationalisation introduced figures of exclusion, the ‘undesirable’, thus reinforcing an international law based on the rights of states rather than individuals.