Constructing the Boundaries of US Citizenship in the Era of Enforcement and Securitization

Abstract

Citizenship is both a status that connects individuals to nation-states and a set of boundaries that delineate differential access to rights, power, and claims of belonging. In the age of mass migration, the concept of citizenship has been tested and elaborated by migrants and scholars alike, but even those interested primarily in citizenship practices that transcend borders acknowledge the fundamentally powerful—and coercive—role played by the state in the twenty-first century (Berg 2013). As multinational corporations expand their reach across the globe, and it becomes more difficult to distinguish where governments end and elite business interests begin, states continue to discipline, control, and manage populations, including those that move across national borders. This chapter is primarily concerned with the construction of boundaries around national citizenship. To varying degrees across the world, these boundaries encircle sets of rights, such as the right to participate in the political process and the right to remain. The boundaries of citizenship work alongside and intersect with many other boundaries that include and exclude, and police and control, immigrant populations in ways that evolve to meet the prerogatives of the state.