Introduction: "The people who can't speak up": the challenge of immigrant political incorporation -- Diverging trajectories of political incorporation -- The social nature of citizenship and participation -- Structured mobilization: the role of government -- The meaning of citizenship -- Community organizations and political mobilization -- Learning to lead and winning office -- Conclusion: multicultural citizenship.
Various politicians and public commentators seek to deny birthright citizenship to children born in the United States to undocumented or temporary migrants. Among their claims, critics of universal birthright citizenship contend that the practice flies in the face of liberal principles, in which both individuals and the state should consent to membership. From this perspective, citizenship through naturalization is valorized, since it rests on the affirmative choice of the immigrant and the clear consent of the state. This chapter proposes a different approach to these debates, one that underscores the principles of inclusion and equality. The argument rests on empirical evidence on how those affected by these debates -- foreign-born residents and their U.S.-born children -- understand belonging in the United States. Interviews with 182 U.S.-born youth and their immigrant parents born in Mexico, China, and Vietnam show that despite a discourse portraying U.S. citizenship as a civic and political affiliation blind to ascriptive traits, many of those interviewed equate "being American" with racial majority status, affluence, and privilege. For many immigrants, membership through naturalization -- the exemplar of citizenship by consent -- does not overcome a lingering sense of outsider status. Perhaps surprisingly, birthright citizenship offers an egalitarian promise: it is a color-blind and class-blind path to membership. The Citizenship Clause of Fourteenth Amendment provides constitutional legitimacy for the ideals of inclusion and equality, facilitating immigrant integration and communal membership through citizenship. [Copyright Elsevier Ltd.]
Cross-national comparison increases the complexity of data collection and analysis but offers the promise of innovative new knowledge; it is hard to know what is noteworthy about an outcome or process without a comparative reference point. Juxtaposing Canada and the United States, two countries more similar to each other than to any other, allows researchers to probe how particular variations can produce consequential differences. The article outlines key historic and contemporary similarities and differences that can affect immigrant political incorporation in North America, including different foundational minority conflicts and variations in current migrant flows. The author discusses the importance of specifying outcomes and how these outcomes can be approached from different levels of analysis. Finally, the author identifies several understudied questions, including cross-national variation in local political responses to immigration—significant in the United States, more muted in Canada—and the differential use of law and rights framing to advance immigrant causes.
