Pursuing Citizenship in the Enforcement Era

Session Submission Type: Author meet critics

Session Description

The law says that everyone who is not a citizen is an alien. But the social reality is more complicated. Ming Hsu Chen argues that the citizen/alien binary should instead be reframed as a spectrum of citizenship, a concept that emphasizes continuities between the otherwise distinct experiences of membership and belonging for immigrants seeking to become citizens. To understand citizenship from the perspective of noncitizens, this book utilizes interviews with more than one-hundred immigrants of varying legal statuses about their attempts to integrate economically, socially, politically, and legally during a modern era of intense immigration enforcement. Studying the experiences of green card holders, refugees, military service members, temporary workers, international students, and undocumented immigrants uncovers the common plight that underlies their distinctions: limited legal status breeds a sense of citizenship insecurity for all immigrants that inhibits their full integration into society. Bringing together theories of citizenship with empirical data on integration and analysis of contemporary policy, Chen builds a case that formal citizenship status matters more than ever during times of enforcement. She refocuses the immigration debate around constructing pathways to citizenship.

This author-meets-critic panel brings together experts in immigration and citizenship from a variety of different methodological and theoretical perspectives to reflect on the arguments of the book and have a panel based discussion of what it means to pursue citizenship in the current enforcement era.

Sub Unit

• Theme Panel

Cosponsor

• Division 52: Migration & Citizenship

Chair

• Elizabeth F. Cohen Syracuse University

Presenters

• Ming Hsu Chen University of Colorado, Boulder

• Rebecca Hamlin University of Massachusetts, Amherst

• Rogers M. Smith University of Pennsylvania

• Monica W Varsanyi CUNY Graduate Center