Urban Citizenship?: The Fraught Nature of Noncitizen Voting

• In Event: Defining Communities: The Politics of Immigration in Cities

Abstract

Access to fundamental social and political rights is linked to national citizenship. This results in a stratification of rights according to legal status, excluding certain immigrants that often results in their marginalization. In this context, immigrants have responded by engaging in various forms of ‘claims making.’ For example, ‘Sanctuary city’ movements claim a form of stakeholder status as ‘state or local citizens’ that not only challenges the nation-states’ ability to draw and uphold national boundaries, but also fundamental meanings of citizenship and belonging in states and cities. So does the establishment of voting rights for noncitizens in municipal elections. This paper seeks to shed light on the strengths and challenges of noncitizen voting rights laws and practices, and their implications for notions of citizenship and political participation using data from research on historical and contemporary cases.

We argue that efforts by immigrants to obtain rights and full inclusion via the state have been fraught, producing positive and negative results. Non citizen voting (NCV) has given immigrants tools to create new forms of participatory belonging, which on balance have produced gains and have potential for more. Yet, NCV also has a seamy side and poses serious challenges in the current context of increased xenophobia and enforcement; NCV can foster colonial settlerism and be limited because gaining formal legal rights doesn’t necessarily produce substantive inclusion in practice. We present findings from our research on NCV, illustrating the fraught nature of both citizenship and NCV laws and practices both historically and today.

Authors

• Ron Hayduk, San Francisco State Unversity

• Kathleen Coll, University of San Francisco