Giving Birth to Citizens: pregnant immigrants and the fight to end birthright citizenship

• In Event: 21061 - Section on Race, Gender, and Class Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 1: Political Ideologies, Action, and Movements

Abstract

Over the past 15 years, debates about the value of birthright citizenship, and narratives describing immigrant reproduction as threatening to citizenship and the composition of society have become rampant in the US and Canada. These debates are driven by intersecting anxieties about race, ethnicity, socio-economic status, gender, and culture. In the United States, these debates and corresponding legislative actions culminated in the January 20th, 2025, Executive Order purporting to end birthright citizenship for the children of certain immigrants. This paper offers a roadmap for understanding how we reached this crisis over the interpretation of the 14th amendment. It is a is a comparative sociolegal examination of reproductive threat narratives in Canadian and US media between 2010 and 2023. I use an intersectional lens to unpack the ways that reproductive threat narratives are applied to distinct immigrant populations, particularly Asian and Latinx communities, while reinforcing overarching exclusionary messages.
Despite key differences in healthcare accessibility, immigrant incorporation, and political leadership, reproductive threat narratives are highly prevalent in both countries. These narratives are applied primarily to non-white immigrants of various socio-economic statuses and narratives differ depending on race/ethnicity, gender and SES. This paper examines debates about who “deserves” to become the parent of a citizen and under what circumstances. Giving birth to a citizen provides concrete ties to the state based on the child’s citizenship. Immigrants’ parenting and family formation decisions are shaped by considerations of legal status, the potential status of their children, and societal attitudes about immigrant parenting. The language of “deservingness” and images of “good” and “bad” immigrants are endemic within historical and contemporary US and Canadian immigration debates. For pregnant immigrants, deservingness and reproductive threat narratives are inextricably intertwined with conceptions of “good parenting.” Reproductive threat narratives are used to define good citizenship, good social membership and good families.

Author

• Zoë Chaetana Miller-Vedam, University of California-Irvine