This article investigates continuities in migration law-making that claims to aim at protecting women but in effect is a tokenist strategy excluding non-Western female migrants. It shows that despite developments in the legal recognition of women’s equality, present restrictions on family reunification in Western Europe, illustrated through the EU and Danish migration laws, echo law-making in the late 19th-century US, exemplified in the process of adopting the Page Act, which also introduced stricter rules for female migrants under the stated objective of protecting women. Using the social theory of articulation, the article demonstrates how legislators continuously articulate and rearticulate the wellbeing of migrant women to legitimize discriminatory migration rules regardless of how highly women’s rights are respected in law and society. The article contributes to previous feminist scholarship in migration law by showing the continuity and intentionality of the articulative practices in law-making directed at migrant women.

本文调查了移民立法的连续性，这些立法声称旨在保护女性，但实际上是一种排除非西方女性移民的象征主义策略。它表明，尽管在法律承认妇女平等方面取得了进展，但西欧目前对家庭团聚的限制，以欧盟和丹麦移民法为例，与 19 世纪后期美国的立法相呼应，体现在通过Page 法案，该法案还根据保护妇女的既定目标为女性移民引入了更严格的规则。文章运用表达的社会理论，展示了立法者如何不断表达和重新表达移民妇女的福祉，以使歧视性移民规则合法化，而不管法律和社会对妇女权利的尊重程度如何。