Citizenship acts and immigrant voting rights movements in the US

Abstract

What happens to notions of national belonging in the US when non-citizen immigrants claim the right to vote at the local level for school boards and city councils? Is this a fundamental challenge to US citizenship norms, or an extension of the force of liberal discipline onto new citizen-subjects-in-formation? While academic literature has focused on historical, legal and normative ethical arguments about non-citizen voting, this article focuses on the vernaculars of citizenship discourses advocates and opponents invoke in order to win over local and state officials to their cause and how they both integrate and challenge official responses to their claims. Such attention to particularities is necessary to appreciate the ways in which citizenship practice is contingent on local political culture and history but also potentially transformative of larger institutions and discussions over national membership. Advocates put into practice arguments from the academic literature and borrowed through trans-local exchanges of information amongst advocates, tailored to suit local political culture and traditions. They simultaneously invoke and undermine notions of scales and levels of citizenship that would disaggregate local discourse from national politics and policies. Attention to the particular dynamics and challenges these actors face in their political work reveals both the utility and limitations of political theory for understanding the issue of non-citizen voting in the US as a particular example of citizenship as practice.