Citizenship Reimagined: A New Framework for State Rights in the United States

Session Submission Type: Virtual Author meet critics

Session Description

The United States is entering a new era of progressive state citizenship, with California leading the way. A growing number of states are providing expanded rights to undocumented immigrants that challenge conventional understandings of citizenship as binary, unidimensional, and exclusively national. In Citizenship Reimagined, Allan Colbern and S. Karthick Ramakrishnan develop a precise framework for understanding and measuring citizenship as expansive, multi-dimensional, and federated - broader than legal status and firmly grounded in the provision of rights. Placing today's immigration battles in historical context, they show that today's progressive state citizenship is not unprecedented: US states have been leaders in rights expansion since America's founding, including over the fight for black citizenship and women's suffrage. The book invites readers to rethink how American federalism relates to minority rights and how state laws regulating undocumented residents can coexist with federal exclusivity over immigration law.

This author-meets-critic panel brings together experts in immigration, citizenship, and American political development 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 for states to expand or contract citizenship rights in parallel to national citizenship rights.

Sub Unit

• Division 52: Migration & Citizenship

Cosponsor

• Division 28: Federalism and Intergovernmental Relations

Chair

• Monica W Varsanyi CUNY Graduate Center

Presenters

• Jamila D. Michener Cornell University

• Daniel Tichenor University of Oregon

• Abigail Fisher Williamson Trinity College