Migrations and crime in the history of criminology. The case of the Immigration Restriction League in the United States

Abstract

The problem of relationship between immigration and crime has always constituted an important theme in criminological research and it has often aroused controversies among scholars. Around fifty years ago Franco Ferracuti interpreted the criminalization of immigrants as the consequence of xenophobic reactions and this explanation was shared by the majority of criminologists. Nevertheless, the deep changes in migratory phenomenon intervened in the last decades have aroused strong alarm in European countries and at present many Authors believe that those conclusions are not more sustainable. The debates appear strongly conditioned by different ideological positions, an aspect that has already been present in evident forms in other crucial historical phases.  
The Author reconstructs the polemic about immigration that flamed in the United States around one century ago, with arguments for some reasons similar to the actual ones. Among leaders of the Immigration Restriction Leaguethere were many renowned academicians in social and natural sciences, some of them professors in Harvard, Princeton or Yale Universities.
They believed that immigration was become a serious threat to the stability and welfare of American society due to the enormous percentage of dangerous and “degenerates” people present among the foreigners received in the United States. Just some concepts elaborated by the Lombrosian school – particularly biological and social atavism– exerted an indirect but remarkable role on the theses of Restrictionism supporters.