Membership without Citizenship: Being 'In' but not 'of' the nation, 1868-1965

• In Event: International Migration Section Refereed Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): 24. Structures of citizenship

Abstract

Among the territorial resident alien population living in the US many do so without ever becoming American citizens, despite eligibility. Why? In all the years of territorial residence, before and if they become citizens, (lawful) permanent residents are ‘in’ but not yet ‘of’ the nation. I aim to understand what goes on in the interim period of territorial residence as a noncitizen to shape the decision to join the nation as a member. What factors affect the acquisition of legal status citizenship among the eligible population? To answer, I consider the range of conditions that affect noncitizens stay as well as well as the grounds for and the prospects of their forced and racialized removal from the US interior. I provide a social, legal, political and institutional history of alienage and the rights, privileges, and protections that lawful status provided permanent residents from the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868, which defined citizenship and its protections, to the mid-20th century equal rights revolution. Doing so allows a deep, temporal consideration of the how alienage laws and membership practices (rights, privileges, and customary practices), federal immigration laws and policies (admissions, material and symbolic inclusions and exclusions), and the obligations required of noncitizens including legal and material mutuality (taxes, military service, obeying municipal laws) together impinged on the decision to naturalize. It also reveals how a doctrine of citizenship as membership developed over the course of the 20th century, from the Court’s Lochner Era to the Welfare-Warfare Doctrine of National Security, through the Cold War and the Civil Rights Era to the restrictive immigration turn after 1965.

Author

• Lauren Duquette-Rury, Wayne State University