Citizenship: Usage examples for AMST 3010, Fordham University, Fall 2011

From Keywords

Culture, Hegemony, and Citizenship

"Indeed, in societies like the United States, where needs are often interpreted in relation to identity factors and cultural difference, culture becomes a significant ground for extending a right to groups that have otherwise been excluded on those terms. The very notion of cultural citizenship implies recognition of cultural difference as a basis for making claims." - George Yúdice, Keywords pg 73

This is precisely the kind of usage example to be archiving. If someone else comes here planning to put the same quotation in and finds that Jake got there first, you can still do something: comment on this usage. What does Yúdice mean by cultural citizenship? It's obviously not the same thing, say, as legal citizenship....so what is it? That sort of question--and the conversation that can emerge from it--is what this space is for.--Ghendler 20:31, 23 September 2011 (EDT)

Nationalism and Citizenship

"Although individuals may move from one nation to another, thus losing or being forced by law to forego one form of citizenship for another, feelings of national belonging cannot be forcibly stripped away." - Alys Eve Weinbaum, "Keywords" pg 166

Transnationalism and Citizenship

"A Europe awash in refugees and other migrants offers too simple an account in producing only two categories - the "citizen" and the exception. In contrast, she argues that there are (of course) multiple kinds of qualities of dispossession, and that even those who are not citizens are not necessarily reduced to the status of "bare life"...but rather have many kinds of claims on states." - Laura Brigs et. al., "Nation and Migration" p132. This isn't exactly a usage of citizenship but I thought it was relevant especially in light of our class discussion yesterday regarding the citizenship test offered to some young adults who have been living in the U.S. for essentially their entire lives. These specific cases fail to fit neatly into either category of citizen or the exception.

"What emerges...is an image of how neoliberalism is producing sovereignty, citizenship, public cultures, and forms of labor that are striated across multiple "zones" that are not nations, but which articulate with nations and with other, transnational forces."- Laura Brigs et. al., "Nation and Migration" p133

"Since illegals live inside the national territory, borders within the nation-state have also proliferated in a manner that ofter racializes Latin Americans and Asians as "foreigners" (while equating citizenship with whiteness)." Eithne Luibheid, "Keywords" pg 128

"If that were the case, border would not be so crucial to the still-under-negotiation concept of U.S. national citizenship." Mary Pat Brady, "The Fungibility of Borders" pg 186

"Scholars studied the ways in which subaltern groups organized around alternative interpretations of dominant political and economic paradigms, including their noninclusion or partial inclusion in specifically national projects like citizenship, socialism, and liberalism." Laura Briggs, "Transnationalism: A Category of Analysis" pg 630

"Although on the one hand it offered itself as a fulfillment of the national project of the Mexican Revolution, of Zapata’s dream of land and full cultural citizenship for impoverished, peasant Mexico, it simultaneously directed itself outward, 'a revolution that makes revolution possible,' in one of its memorable apho- risms. International solidarity activists were welcomed, but also transformed into students of forms of privatization, neoliberal governance, and alternative, deep forms of democracy." Laura Briggs, "Transnationalism: A Category of Analysis" pg 633

"Indigenous people...are construed as signs of a colonial moment before the nation, or, if acknowledged in the present, an unruly and ungovernable people who cannot be fully incorporated in the citizenry or the national economy." Laura Briggs, "Transnationalism: A Category of Analysis" pg 140. This use of citizenry implies certain characteristics of citizenship: citizens are ruled and governed by a nation and participate in that nation's economy.

"Ramón’s encounter with the customs agent also indicates how the Catholic confessional model influences border-crossing rituals. With a set of questions that always include “What is your citizenship?” and “What have you purchased?” (as well as, perhaps, “Where are you going?”), the performance of the crossing sanctioned as “legal” depends upon a known set of priestly-parishioner relationships." Mary Pat Brady, "The Fungibility of Borders" pg 181

"At the same time, the heterosexual family has been viewed as a mechanism to assimilate immigrants into "American" culture and citizenship..." Eithne Luibhéild, "Immigration" pg 131.

"Immigrants have regularly been accused of deliberately attempting to "(re)colonize" parts of the United States through birthing children who were legal citizens, but considered racially and culturally "unassimilable," prompting new cycles of exclusionary and eugenic measures." Eithne Luibhéid, "Immigration" pg 131

Border and Citizenship

"Nevertheless, Chinese immigration and exclusion in the United States transformed both its northern and southern borders into sites where illegal immigration, race, citizenship, immigration policy, and international relations were contested and reshaped." Erika Lee, "Enforcing the Borders" pg 152

"Following the 1898 Supreme Court ruling that affirmed birthright citizenship for American-born Chinese, Chinese seeking entry from Canada began to claim that they were born in the United States." Erika Lee "Enforcing the Borders" pg 155. With this part of the article, I was thinking a lot about documented citizenship versus cultural, learned, and emotional citizenship. Documents can be forged, yet still seem to merit access.

"...the Bureau of Immigration reported that falsely claiming citizenship constituted 'the chief means' of violating the Exclusion Act." Erika Lee, "Enforcing the Border" pg 155

"They received fraudulent Mexican citizenship papers..." Erika Lee "Enforcing the Border" pg 161

"Nevertheless, Europeans' unlawful entries were not defined as threats to the American nation, as were those of the Chinese. ...Europeans--even illegal immigrants--were still future American citizens." Erika Lee "Enforcing the Border" pg 171. I thought this use of "citizen" could be useful in that it suggests how American citizenship seems to be more accessible to white immigrants than those of other races.

Ethnicity and Citizenship

"In light of the immigrant rights protests of 2006 and the attendant surge in citizenship applications, this article presents a political ethnography of a citizenship class in Southern California..." Adrián Félix, "New Americans or Diasporic Nationalists?" p 100

"Citizenship acquisition is conventionally understood as a landmark in the process of immigrant incorporation." Adrián Félix, "New Americans or Diasporic Nationalists?" p 100

"Drawing on seven months of ethnographic fieldwork and twelve in-depth interviews with Mexican migrants who were preparing for the naturalization interview (or had already completd it) in a citizenship class in San Bernardino County, this essay..." Adrián Félix, "New Americans or Diasporic Nationalists?" p 101

"US-born Mexicans and their political organizations broke with the former view against naturalization and called upon Mexican immigrants to become American citizens involved in American elections..." Adrián Félix, "New Americans or Diasporic Nationalists?" p 100 I thought Félix's usage of "citizen" here could be beneficial to us in that he provides an example here of what it means to be a citizen

"Moreover, while the anxiety, intimidation, and other negative factors attributed to low naturalization rates among Mexican migrants are well documented, such experiences are countered by the collective emotions, rapport, and solidarity of the citizenship classroom, positing it as a potentially empowering public space for the immigrant rights movement. Rather than operating as a conduit for Americanization, the citizenship classroom can be a space where migrants make the naturalization experience intelligible on their own cultural and political terms." Adrián Félix, "New Americans or Diasporic Nationalists?" 101.

"...migrants develop a counternarrative that exposes the arbitrariness of the naturalization process, creating an oppositional, rather than assimilative, relationship to citizenship and national identity." Adrián Félix, "New Americans or Diasporic Nationalists?" 101.

"As the data will show, the value of citizenship in the lives of immigrants has expanded beyond the quality-of-life benefits already noted in the literature, to include an added motive of collective political action." Adrián Félix, "New Americans or Diasporic Nationalists?" p 107

"The production and validation of these alternative sets of knowledge in the classroom create an oppositional, rather than assimilative, relationship to citizenship and national identity, since both are denied to many immigrants legally and in everyday social interactions." Adrián Félix, "New Americans or Diasporic Nationalists?" p 110

"Dolores said she sought citizenship for benefits, a better salary, and perhaps a 'government job one day.'" Adrián Félix, "New Americans or Diasporic Nationalists?" p 113

"2006 protests and subsequent migrant solidarity and collective action have the potential to transform the meaning and possibility of U.S. democracy and citizenship, in this case, via the legalization of millions of undocumented immigrants and their families." "New Americans or Diasporic Nationalists?" 116.

“I think that we can take the [citizenship] oath [of allegiance] but never be completely loyal. I think that you can never deny your roots or origins.” New Americans or Diasporic Nationalists?" 116.

"U.S. citizenship is indiscriminately negated to many migrants during the naturalization interview. In response to such bureaucratic inconsistency, the citizenship class functions as an alternative public space where migrants develop a counternarrative that exposes the arbitrariness of the naturalization process, creating an oppositional, rather than assimilative, relationship to citizenship and national identity." Adrián Félix, "New Americans or Diasporic Nationalists?" p 101

Legal Citizenship

"Most simply, citizenship refers to a standing within the law (this is often called formal citizenship); jus soli citizenship allots citizenship to people born within the geographical territory, and juss sanguinis awards citizenship by way of a parental inheritance." Lauren Berlant "Citizenship" Keywords pg 37.

"Citizenship is a relation among strangers who learn to feel it as a common identity based on shared historical, legal, or familial connection to a geopolitical space." Lauren Berlant "Citizenship" Keywords pg 37.

"Cultural citizenship describes the histories of subordinated groups within the nation-state that might not be covered by official legal or political narratives (T. Miller 1993, 2001; Ong 1996; R. Rosaldo 1999); Consumer citizenship designates contemporary practices of social belonging and political pacification in the United States (Shanley 1997; Cronin 200; L. Cohen 2003); Sexual Citizenship references the ongoing struggle to gain full legal rights for gendered and sexual minorities (Berlant and Warner 2000; Cott 2000; M. Kaplan 1997); and Global Citizenship describes a project of deriving a concept of justice from linkages among people on a transnational or global scale (Falk 1994; Bosniak 1998; Hardt and Negri 2000). Lauren Berlant "Citizenship" Keywords pg 38.

"U.S. citizenship may be best thought of as an intricate scene where competing forces, definitions, and geographies of freedom and liberty are lived concretely. Citizenship is the practical site of a theoretical existence, in that it allows for the reproduction of a variety of kinds of laws in everyday life. It is an abstract idea on behalf of which people engage in personal and political acts, from cheating on taxes to pledging allegiance to fomenting revolutions. It is also, importantly, an ordinary space of activity that many people occupy without thinking much about it, as the administration of citizenship is usually delegated to the political sphere and only periodically worried over during exceptional crises or the election season." Lauren Berlant "Citizenship" Keywords pg 38.

"The citizenship and naturalization claims of foreigners, denizens,and residents within the borders of a polity, as well as the laws, norms and rules governing such procedures are pivotal social practices through which the normative perplexities of human rights and sovereignty can be most acutely observed." Seyla Benhabib "Citizens, Residents, and Aliens in a Changing World: Political Membership in a global Era" pg 711.

"Sociologically, the practice and institution of "citizenship" can be disaggregated into three components: collective identity; privileges of political membership, and social rights and claims." Seyla Benhabib "Citizens, Residents, and Aliens in a Changing World: Political Membership in a global Era" pg 720.

"Changes in the basis of citizenship are not simply about the moral composition of the civic public, but have important economic and social consequences..." J. M. Mancini and Graham Finlay "Citizenship Matters" p 74

"The government's official position was explicitly to distinguish between immigration and citizenship, and to insist that the referendum's purpose was not to keep out immigrants, but to reform citizenship law." J. M. Mancini and Graham Finlay, "Citizenship Matters" p 80

"In so doing, we must be sure to understand how citizenship, like immigration policy, creates borders between the global haves and the global have-nots." J. M. Mancini and Graham Finlay "Citizenship Matters" p 91

"China, Japan, India, and Siam each received the minimum quota of 100, but the law excluded the native citizens of those countries from immigration because they were deemed to be racially ineligible for citizenship" Mae M. Ngai, "The Architecture of Race in American Immigration Law".

Empire and Citizenship

"Cultural citizenship, or the everyday experience of national belonging beyond legal citizenship, is thus a crucible for many of the key issues facing Muslim immigrant youth." Sunaina Maira. "Flexible Citizenship/Flexible Empire." 198.

"Cultural citizenship, according to Lok Siu, refers to the “behaviors, discourses, and practices that give meaning to citizenship as lived experience” in the context of “an uneven and complex field of structural inequalities and webs of power relations,” the “quotidian practices of inclusion and exclusion.” Recent work on citizenship has shed light on “the tension between citizenship as a formal legal status and as a normative project or an aspiration” that remains unfulfilled in countries such as the United States despite the “formal equality” guaranteed to citizens. Sunaina Maira. "Flexible Citizenship/Flexible Empire." 201.

"...in this article I focus on one mode of cultural citizenship, in particular, that emerges from the transnational experiences of these youth in relation to migration, family, labor and cultural consumption." Sunaina Maira. "Flexible Citizenship/Flexible Empire." 201.

"The concept of flexible citizenship is used to describe the emergence of new uses of citizenship by migrants in response to the conditions of transnationalism, specifically, the use of transnational links to provide political or material resources not available within a single nation-state." Sunaina Maira. "Flexible Citizenship/Flexible Empire." 201.

"Their desires for U.S. citizenship and permanent residency were not seen as conflicting with their affiliations with their home nation-states but layered in a flexible understanding of national belonging, embedded in mobility and migration." Sunaina Maira. "Flexible Citizenship/Flexible Empire." 201.

“'Postnational citizenship,' which is partly outside the national realm, or 'denationalized citizenship,' based on a transformation of the nation itself, but both forms coexist as the nation-state continues to be significant. Flexible citizenship, in my view, is a manifestation of both postnational and denationalized citizenship, for it emerges in response to changes in the institution of citizenship within nation-states as well as to shifts in power on national and global scales." Sunaina Maira. "Flexible Citizenship/Flexible Empire." 202.

"For many men and women, especially youth, the questions specific to citizenship, such as how we inform ourselves and who represents our interests, are answered more often than not through private consumption of commodities and media offerings than through the abstract rules of democracy or through participation in discredited legal organizations.” Sunaina Maira. "Flexible Citizenship/Flexible Empire." 207.

"The privatization of citizenship in the neoliberal state has diminished the right of citizens to public goods and services that are allocated according to individual “worthiness” and not by right. “Good” immigrants deserving of citizenship who can affirm the myth of a nation of hard-working immigrants are distinguished from “bad” immigrants who are a threat to society and deserve to be expelled. " Sunaina Maira. "Flexible Citizenship/Flexible Empire." 208.

"Cultural citizenship in the United States has become defined through the idea of crisis: the theme of a nation that is morally, culturally, and politically under attack and whose national identity must be defended, as has been propagated by conservatives for the past several decades and, most dramatically, after 9/11." Sunaina Maira. "Flexible Citizenship/Flexible Empire." 214.

Whiteness and Citizenship

"As the demographics and politics of the new nation changed, so did the meaning of "whiteness" and the conditions under which one could claim it. The U.S. Naturalization Act of 1790 limited naturalized citizenship to "free white persons" although "white " was considered a scientific category, the courts varyingly adjudicated the whiteness of plaintiffs on nonscientific grounds" Keywords. White. Pamela Perry. 244.

"The photograph of Robert Canedo evokes the subsequent 'Mexican American generation,' for whom service in World War II was an integral compoenent...emphasizing U.S. citizenship." Julie M. Weise, "Mexican Nationalisms, Southern Racisms" pg 247.

"...the Catholic priest at Clarksdale claimed that five thousand 'Mexicans,' as he called them without regard to citizenship, were picking cotton on plantations throughout the region..." Julie M. Weise, "Mexican Nationalisms, Southern Racisms" pg 253.

"Poor and isolated on dispersed plantations, and without claims to U.S. citizenship, these immigrants organized not through Mexican American groups in Texas, but rather, the Mexican consulate in New Orleans and the wealthier Mexican community affiliated with it." Julie M. Weise, "Mexican Nationalisms, Southern Racisms" pg 259.

Religion and Citizenship

"Renderings of Mexican exiles in the 1930s escaping religious persecution, for example, and their conceptualization of México de Afuera, 'unyielding dedication to nationalism, Mexican national symbols, the Spanish language, Mexican citizenship, and the Catholic faith rooted in devotion to Mexico's national patroness'...set a precedent for contemporary analyses." Elaine Peña, "Beyond Mexico: Sacred Space in Chicago" pg 221.

"...one of the main objectives in founding the Second Tepeyac is to celebrate la Virgencita's presence with others, regardless of race, citizenship, or class status." Elaine Peña "Beyond Mexico: Sacred Space in Chicago" pg 231.

"In addition to offering free consultation and supervision, lawyers sold a twenty-five dollar 'citizenship' box complete with bilingual flash cards featuring questions such as...[How many stars appear on the American flag?] Answer: ...'fifty stars.'" Elaine Peña, "Beyond Mexico: Sacred Space in Chicago" pg 237.

"This taller de ciudadanía, or citizenship workshop, was undetectable to anyone who was not aware of the developing connection between el Cerrito as a sacred space adn as a platform for immigration reform and legal services." Elaine Peña, "Beyond Mexico: Sacred Space in Chicago" pg 238.

"Approximately two hundred Guadalupan devotees listened patiently to the statements, but only those devotees with citizenship, about 10 percent, were able to sign the petition." Elaine Peña, "Beyond Mexico: Sacred Space in Chicago" pg 241.

Globalization and Citizenship

"'You're absolutely right, ma'am, but our hands are tied up unless you, as a responsible citizen help us out." Julia Alvarez, How the García Girls Lost Their Accents pg 159. I thought this use of "citizen" should be included. In this usage, "citizenship" means recognition of certain responsibilities and duties.

"The García girls were only legal residents, not citizens, but for the police to mistake Mami for a citizen was a compliment too great to spare a child discomfort." Julia Alvarez, How the García Girls Lost Their Accents pg 160. Here, again, I thought that "citizen" should be noted. In this quote, I think the word citizenship implies a social status.