I'd like to take up Cristina's proposition that "it is precisely the thinness of American citizenship that makes it so valuable to its members." This is an intriguing possibility but in the end I'm not sure I'm on board. The characterization is consonant with the traditional understanding of American citizenship as being an open affair, and not amounting to much...
Alex Alenikoff and John Fonte pose contrasting challenges about where citizenship goes beyond the nation-state. Alex argues in effect that citizenship will move up the territorial chain: [W]hile it is perhaps true that the nation-state form is evolving (even declining), what is ascendant is not a set of other non-political associations; we are not witnessing the rise of world anarchy...
I want to begin this post by addressing John’s claim that it has never happened in history that a democracy has extended beyond the nation state. On the one hand, I share his difficulty in imagining a world where the nation state is not the locus of democratic participation, because it seems to be the form of organization that best...
[Chimene Keitner is Associate Professor at UC-Hastings College of Law and the author of The Paradoxes of Nationalism (SUNY Press 2007).] The first four chapters of Peter's thought-provoking book send a clear message: U.S. citizenship is not all it's cracked up to be. The message can at times seem harsh: "Becoming a citizen entitles one to little more than the right...
It's true, as Alex and Jon point out: the number of immigrants seeking naturalization have in effect gone through the roof. The statistics look dramatic: the volume of applications from the mid-90s onward dwarf figures from earlier decades. More than 1.3 million individuals applied for citizenship in FY 2007. That's more in one year than the...
Cristina asks this question, and she has a good point in arguing, not necessarily. I agree that community affiliation is not a zero-sum proposition and that it is possible to be a fully engaged member of more than one polity. I have argued that plural citizenship should be not merely tolerated but embraced (here, for example). Autonomy...
Just returned from Peter's talk at the Woman's National Democratic Club. Peter gave a fine talk and it was a very enjoyable event. The questions were submitted in writing and my question wasn't asked, so I will ask it now. Is it possible to have democratic self-government without a nation-state or some other entity like a city-state, that has restrictions...
Thanks to Jon for his richly detailed post. It's true that the last great wave of immigration, at the turn of the nineteenth to twentieth centuries, witnessed some of the same phenomenon, including circular migration and the flowering of immigrant enclaves. But there are at least two developments which make the current picture a very different one. 1. ...
[John Fonte is Senior Fellow and Director of the Center for American Common Culture at the Hudson Institute.] Thanks to Peter for inviting me to participate. I am off to see Peter speak here in Washington at the Woman's National Democratic Club in about thirty minutes and will comment more when I come back. But first let me put forward a...
[Cristina Rodriguez is Associate Professor of Law, New York University School of Law.] First, thank you to Peter and to Opinio Juris for making this conversation possible. Among the many things that Beyond Citizenship illuminates is the curious absence of discussion within today’s immigration debate about the changing nature of citizenship. That absence, I think, is suggestive of the salience of...
[Jon Weinberg is Professor of Law at Wayne State University.] Thanks so much to Opinio Juris for hosting this discussion, and to Peter for making it possible. Peter's is a terrific and thought-provoking book, even if I do disagree with most of it. In this post, I want to talk about some of its empirical bases. Alex has...
[T. Alexander Aleinikoff is Dean and Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center, and the author of Semblances of Sovereignty: The Constitution, the State, and American Citizenship (Harvard University Press 2002).] Thanks to Opinio Juris for the chance to offer up a few thoughts on Peter's provocative book. Beyond Citizenship argues that the idea of citizenship as deeply...
