Policing Morality: Regulating Sexuality across the Canada-United States Border

Abstract

During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Canada and the United States attempted to protect sexual morality at home by extending their power abroad. They used border surveillance to control the transnational movements of Euro-Canadians, Euro-Americans, Chinese immigrants, and Native Americans. At the same time, they developed creative ways to punish deviancy abroad by relying on an expansive understanding of the extradition process and by using race-based legislation to increase their coercive power. They deprived individuals of their intergenerational access to wealth and status through their ability to control marital recognition. Deprivation served as a powerful tool to secure conformity even beyond the explicit legal boundaries each country maintained.