The Legal-domestic Sources of Immigrant Rights

Abstract

This article traces the evolution of two types of immigrant rights—alien rights and the right to citizenship—across three polities (the United States, Germany, and the European Union). It argues that the sources of rights expansion are mostly legal and domestic: Rights expansion originates in independent and activist courts, which mobilize domestic law (especially constitutional law) and domestic legitimatory discourses, often against restriction-minded, democratically accountable governments. The legal-domestic hypothesis is qualified and differentiated according to polity, migrant group, and type of immigrant right.