Citizenship Reimagined: A New Framework for State Rights in the United States
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 book is the winner of the 2021 Best Book Award by the Migration and Citizenship Section of the American Political Science Association.
Bio
Dr. Allan Colbern is Co-Director of Social Justice & Human Rights master's programs, Founding Director of ASU's U.S. Immigration & Citizenship Lab, and Assistant Professor of Political Science, in the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences in the New College at Arizona State University. He has works with immigrant rights organizations throughout the United States on policy advocacy, capacity building, and coalition building. His expertise is in American politics, race, immigration, social movements, policy, federalism and citizenship. A focus of his research is understanding how institutions and policies expand and contract the rights of marginalized communities, and challenging illegality framing of undocumented immigrants as being outside the law’s protection and undeserving of rights.
