Spectres of migration and the ghosts of Ellis Island

This article is based on in-depth interviews carried out with producers involved inthe restoration of Ellis Island Immigration Station, New York and those responsiblefor turning it into a successful national heritage site which opened to the publicin 1990. The buildings on Ellis Island operated as an Immigration Station betweenapproximately 1892 and 1924 during which time they processed over 16 millionmigrants of predominantly European origin. An analysis of interviews conducted aswell as readings of Ellis Island taken from archives, folklore and US popularculture suggest that the site is imbued with the spectropolitics of its politicallyemotive immigrant processing past. Rather than dismissing the spectrality associatedwith Ellis Island as folkloric or irrational, the article attempts to untangle thedifferent meanings attributed to the `ghosts' that circulate through the buildingsand material objects that inhabit the island. It suggests that a number of `tropes'of ghostliness can be associated with the island; uncanny ghosts which defy thesanitizing force of the restoration; conjured ghosts, which are deliberately invokedby producers for various political and economic purposes, and the ghosts ofdeconstruction which make any meta-narrative of immigration history at Ellis Islanda precarious if not troubling achievement