Progressive Citizenship? Contrasts in State Rights for Blacks and Immigrants

• In Event: Immigration and Politics

Abstract

In State Citizenship: A New Framework for Rights in the United States, we lay out a novel framework for citizenship—one that is multidimensional, grounded in rights, and focuses on the interplay between national and subnational provisions. Importantly, we lay out a typology of progressive citizenship (where states expand rights beyond those provided at the national level), regressive citizenship (where states detract rights available at the national level), and reinforcing citizenship (where states reinforce federal restrictions on rights at the state level). We show that this framework is useful to understand variations in the provision of rights over time and across states, not only for immigrants in the United States but also other marginalized populations such as African Americans and LGBT residents.

Here, we move from conceptualization and classification to explanation. What accounts for moves between regressive, restrictive and progressive citizenship for immigrants and U.S.-born blacks in the United States? Combining process-tracing and time-series analysis, the article tests an explanatory framework of how key national events, the building of state coalitions, and structural conflicts and accommodations in federalism have historically led to the formation of progressive state citizenship. The article ends by contrasting the constitutional safeguards of blacks as national citizens with the lack of safeguards for immigrants to reveal different trajectories for the future of progressive state citizenship.

Authors

• Allan Colbern, Arizona State University

• Karthick Ramakrishnan, University of California Riverside