Elke Winter | Spring 2021 | Harvard University
This course focuses on the structural and discursive conditions of membership in the nation. It examines how immigration and citizenship policies emphasize specific dimensions of national identity, and how they operate as means of nation-building under the conditions of neoliberalism and globalization. The course introduces students to key sociological issues, concepts, and theories on both nationalism and citizenship, two bodies of literature that cross-fertilize but do not fully overlap. Drawing primarily on recent debates and empirical cases from Europe and North America, the course also highlights how (im)migration and different forms of citizenship acquisition (e.g. birthright versus naturalization) interact with some of the “new nationalisms” (e.g. Brexit, the rise of Trump, new nationalist/identity movements in Europe).
Overall, this course has two principal goals: First, it offers an overview of the interdisciplinary debates that have shaped the field(s) in recent years. Second, it invites students to ask new questions and provides them with the sociological tools to address them.
General
Readings
Week 1 (January 26): Introduction to the Course
Recommended: There are no required readings this week. However, if you're curious about how nationalism works and why citizenship (defined here strictly as legal status) matters, consider the following readings:
Wimmer, Andreas. 2019. “Why Nationalism Works—and Why It Isn’t Going Away.” Foreign Affairs, 98(2), March–April: 27–34.
Kerwin, Donald, and Robert Warren. 2019. “Putting Americans First: A Statistical Case for Encouraging Rather than Impeding and Devaluing U.S. Citizenship.” Journal on Migration and Human Security, 7(4): 108–122.
Week 2 (February 2): Nationalism — From Human Rights to Citizenship
Required Readings:
Gellner, Ernest. 1982. “The Industrial Division of Labour and National Cultures.” Government and Opposition 17(3): 268–78.
Anderson, Benedict. 1991. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, 2nd ed. London and New York: Verso, Chapters 1 and 3 (pp. 1–7, 37–46).
Wimmer, Andreas. 2002. “The Making of Modern Communities.” In Nationalist Exclusion and Ethnic Conflict: Shadows of Modernity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 42–81 (pay particular attention to pp. 52–64).
Weitz, Eric D. 2015. “Self-Determination: How a German Enlightenment Idea Became the Slogan of National Liberation and a Human Right.” The American Historical Review 120(2): 462–496.
Wimmer, Andreas, and Yuval Feinstein. 2010. “The Rise of the Nation-State across the World, 1816 to 2001.” American Sociological Review 75(5): 764–90.
Recommended:
Renan, Ernest. 1990. “What is a Nation?” In Nation and Narration, edited by Homi K. Bhabha, 8–22. London and New York: Routledge.
Adamson, G., A. Carlbom, and P. Ouis. 2014. “Johann Herder, Early Nineteenth-Century Counter-Enlightenment, and the Common Roots of Multiculturalism and Right-Wing Populism.” Telos (169): 28–38.
Bonikowski, Bart. 2016. “Nationalism in Settled Times.” Annual Review of Sociology 42(1): 427–49.
Greenfeld, Liah. 1991. “The Emergence of Nationalism in England and France.” Research in Political Sociology 5: 333–370.
Week 3 (February 9): Citizenship — Modernity’s Apogee and Its Blind Spots
Required Readings:
Marshall, Thomas H. 1998 [1949]. “Citizenship and Social Class.” In The Citizenship Debates: A Reader, edited by Gershon Shafir, 93–111. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Tilly, Charles. 1999. “Where Do Rights Come From?” In T. Skocpol (ed.), Democracy, Revolution and History. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, pp. 55–72.
Bloemraad, Irene, and Alicia Sheares. 2017. “Understanding Membership in a World of Global Migration: (How) Does Citizenship Matter?” International Migration Review 51(4): 823–867.
Shachar, Ayelet. 2009. “Introduction.” In The Birthright Lottery: Citizenship and Global Inequality, 1–15. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Boatcă, Manuela, and Julia Roth. 2016. “Unequal and Gendered: Notes on the Coloniality of Citizenship.” Current Sociology 64(2): 191–212.
Recommended:
FitzGerald, David Scott. 2017. “The History of Racialized Citizenship.” In The Oxford Handbook of Citizenship, edited by Ayelet Shachar, Rainer Bauböck, Irene Bloemraad, and Maarten Vink, 129–152. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Week 4 (February 16): Comparative Perspectives & Development of the Field
Required Readings:
Castles, Stephen. 1995. “How Nation-States Respond to Immigration and Ethnic Diversity.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 21(3): 293–308.
Mijs, Jonathan J. B., Elyas Bakhtiari, and Michèle Lamont. 2016. “Neoliberalism and Symbolic Boundaries in Europe: Global Diffusion, Local Context, Regional Variation.” Socius: Social Research for a Dynamic World 2: 1–8.
Vink, Maarten. 2017. “Comparing Citizenship Regimes.” In The Oxford Handbook of Citizenship, edited by Ayelet Shachar, Rainer Bauböck, Irene Bloemraad, and Maarten Vink, p. 28. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
FitzGerald, David S., David Cook-Martín, Angela S. García, and Rawan Arar. 2018. “Can You Become One of Us? A Historical Comparison of Legal Selection of ‘Assimilable’ Immigrants in Europe and the Americas.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 44(1): 27–47.
Recommended:
Brochmann, Grete, and Arnfinn H. Midtbøen. 2020. “Philosophies of Integration? Elite Views on Citizenship Policies in Scandinavia.” Ethnicities: 1–19.
Lamont, Michèle, and Laurent Thévenot. 2000. “Introduction: Toward a Renewed Comparative Cultural Sociology.” In Rethinking Comparative Cultural Sociology: Repertoires of Evaluation in France and the United States, edited by Laurent Thévenot and Michèle Lamont, Cambridge Cultural Social Studies, 1–22. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lamont, Michèle, Jessica Welburn, Graziella Moraes Silva, Elisa Reis, Joshua Guetzkow, Nissim Mizrachi, and Hanna Herzog. 2017. “From the Study of Racism to Destigmatization and the Transformation of Group Boundaries.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 40(8): 1287–1297.
Bail, Christopher A. 2008. “The Configuration of Symbolic Boundaries against Immigrants in Europe.” American Sociological Review 73(1): 37–59.
Janoski, Thomas. 2010. “From Manifest Destiny to Multicultural Diversity in the Settler Countries.” In The Ironies of Citizenship, 89–123. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Leong, Chan-Hoong, Adam Komisarof, Justine Dandy, Inga Jasinskaja-Lahti, Saba Safdar, Katja Hanke, and Eugene Teng. 2020. “What Does It Take to Become ‘One of Us?’ Redefining Ethnic-Civic Citizenship Using Markers of Everyday Nationhood.” International Journal of Intercultural Relations 78: 10–19.
Week 5 (February 23): Becoming a Citizen — Birthright and Naturalization
Required Readings:
Jones, Martha S. 2018. Birthright Citizens: A History of Race and Rights in Antebellum America. Cambridge University Press. (Chapter TBC)
Lawrence, Bonita. 2008. “Regulating Native Identity by Gender.” In Daily Struggles: The Deepening Racialization and Feminization of Poverty in Canada, edited by Maria A. Wallis and Siu-ming Kwok, 59–73. Toronto: Canadian Scholars' Press.
Harder, Lois. 2021. “‘Maternity Tourism’, Civic Integration and Jus Soli Citizenship in Canada.” Revue européenne des migrations internationales.
Stevens, Jacqueline. 2010. “Abolishing Birthright Citizenship.” In States Without Nations: Citizenship for Mortals, 73–103. New York: Columbia University Press.
Goodman, Sara Wallace. 2020. “‘Good American Citizens’: A Text-as-Data Analysis of Citizenship Manuals for Immigrants, 1921–1996.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies: 1–24.
Kristol, Anne, and Janine Dahinden. 2020. “Becoming a Citizen Through Marriage: How Gender, Ethnicity and Class Shape the Nation.” Citizenship Studies 24(1): 40–56.
Recommended:
Bloemraad, Irene. 2013. “Being American/Becoming American: Birthright Citizenship and Immigrants’ Membership in the United States.” In Studies in Law, Politics and Society, edited by Austin Sarat, 60: 55–84. Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
Barreto, Amílcar Antonio, and Kyle Lozano. 2017. “Hierarchies of Belonging: Intersecting Race, Ethnicity, and Territoriality in the Construction of US Citizenship.” Citizenship Studies 21(8): 999–1014.
Rigueur, Leah Wright, and Anna Beshlian. 2019. “The History and Progress of Black Citizenship.” Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race 16(1): 267–277.
Felfe, Christina, Helmut Rainer, and Judith Saurer. 2020. “Why Birthright Citizenship Matters for Immigrant Children: Short- and Long-Run Impacts on Educational Integration.” Journal of Labor Economics 38(1): 143–182.
Dubois, Janique, and Kelly Saunders. 2017. “Rebuilding Indigenous Nations Through Constitutional Development: A Case Study of the Métis in Canada.” Nations and Nationalism 23(4): 878–901.
Leroux, Darryl. 2018. “‘We’ve Been Here for 2,000 Years’: White Settlers, Native American DNA, and the Phenomenon of Indigenization.” Social Studies of Science 48(1): 80–100.
Xhardez, Catherine. 2020. “Citizenship as a Rhetorical Tool of Nation-Building: Discourse in Flanders and Quebec.” Citizenship Studies 24(6): 804–824.
Subramanian, Narendra. 2020. “From Bondage to Citizenship: A Comparison of African American and Indian Lower-Caste Mobilization in Two Regions of Deep Inequality.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 62(4): 770–809.
Mossaad, Nadwa, Jeremy Ferwerda, Duncan Lawrence, Jeremy M. Weinstein, and Jens Hainmueller. 2018. “Determinants of Refugee Naturalization in the United States.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 115(37): 9175–9180.
Pickus, Noah. 2014. “Laissez-Faire and Its Discontents: US Naturalization and Integration Policy in Comparative Perspective.” Citizenship Studies 18(2): 160–174.
Aptekar, Sofya. 2016. “Making Sense of Naturalization: What Citizenship Means to Naturalizing Immigrants in Canada and the USA.” Journal of International Migration and Integration 17(4): 1143–1161.
Zamora, Sylvia. 2018. “Mexican Illegality, Black Citizenship, and White Power: Immigrant Perceptions of the U.S. Socioracial Hierarchy.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 44(11): 1897–1914.
Week 6 (March 2): Claiming, Granting, and Contesting Cultural Citizenship for Minorities
Required Readings:
Young, Iris Marion. 1989. “Polity and Group Difference: A Critique of the Ideal of Universal Citizenship.” Ethics 99(2): 250–274.
Kymlicka, Will. 2003. “The Ties That Bind.” In Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights, 173–192. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Putnam, Robert D. 2007. “E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twenty-First Century. The 2006 Johan Skytte Prize Lecture.” Scandinavian Political Studies 30(2): 137–174.
Herring, Cedric. 2009. “Does Diversity Pay?: Race, Gender, and the Business Case for Diversity.” American Sociological Review 74(2): 208–224.
Mayorga-Gallo, Sarah. 2019. “The White-Centering Logic of Diversity Ideology.” American Behavioral Scientist, April.
Recommended:
Joppke, Christian. 2017. “Multiculturalism: Not One but Many Things,” and “What Remains: A Multiculturalism of the Individual.” In Is Multiculturalism Dead? Crisis and Persistence in the Constitutional State, 14–38 & 120–128. Cambridge: Polity.
Winter, Elke. 2020. “Multicultural Citizenship for the Highly Skilled? Naturalization, Human Capital, and the Boundaries of Belonging in Canada’s Middle-Class Nation-Building.” Ethnicities.
Janoski, Thomas. 2010. “From Manifest Destiny to Multicultural Diversity in the Settler Countries.” In The Ironies of Citizenship, 89–123. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Ryan, Phil. 2016. “Does Canadian Multiculturalism Survive Through State Repression?” Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 22(3): 342–350.
Week 7 (March 9): Neoliberalism and the Erosion of Social Citizenship
Required Readings:
Turner, Bryan S. 2017. “Contemporary Citizenship: Four Types.” Journal of Citizenship and Globalisation Studies 1(1): 10–23.
Wacquant, Loïc. 2010. “Crafting the Neoliberal State: Workfare, Prisonfare, and Social Insecurity.” Sociological Forum 25(2): 197–220.
Mau, Steffen. 2015. “Middle Classes and the European Social Model” and “Individualization and Tolerance for Inequality.” In Inequality, Marketization and the Majority Class: Why Did the European Middle Classes Accept Neo-Liberalism?, vi–xii, 1–24. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Neckel, Sighard. 2019. “The Refeudalization of Modern Capitalism.” Journal of Sociology (online first).
Recommended:
Fraser, Nancy. 1998. “From Redistribution to Recognition? Dilemmas of Justice in a 'Post-Socialist' Age.” In Theorizing Multiculturalism: A Guide to the Current Debate, edited by Cynthia Willet, 19–49. Oxford: Blackwell.
Sassen, Saskia. 2005. “When National Territory Is Home to the Global: Old Borders to Novel Borderings.” New Political Economy 10(4): 523–541.
Yoo, Eunhye. 2011. “International Human Rights Regime, Neoliberalism, and Women’s Social Rights, 1984–2004.” International Journal of Comparative Sociology 52(6): 503–528.
Grace, Breanne L., Stephanie J. Nawyn, and Betty Okwako. 2018. “The Right to Belong (If You Can Afford It): Market-Based Restrictions on Social Citizenship in Refugee Resettlement.” Journal of Refugee Studies 31(1): 42–62.
Könönen, Jukka. 2018. “Differential Inclusion of Non-Citizens in a Universalistic Welfare State.” Citizenship Studies 22(1): 53–69.
Ypi, Lea. 2018. “Borders of Class: Migration and Citizenship in the Capitalist State.” Ethics & International Affairs 32(2): 141–152.
Wyn Edwards, Catrin. 2020. “Community versus Commodity in Francophone Canada: A Multilevel Approach to the Neoliberalization of Immigration.” Canadian Journal of Political Science 53: 39–60.
Elrick, Jennifer. 2020. “Bureaucratic Implementation Practices and the Making of Canada’s Merit-Based Immigration Policy.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies: 1–19.
Moffitt, Ursula E., Luciara Nardon, and Hui Zhang. 2020. “Becoming Canadian: Immigrant Narratives of Professional Attainment.” International Journal of Intercultural Relations 78: 84–95.
Habibis, Daphne, Penny Skye Taylor, and Bruna S. Ragaini. 2020. “White People Have No Face: Aboriginal Perspectives on White Culture and the Costs of Neoliberalism.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 43(7): 1149–1168.
Week 8 (March 23): The Nativist Backlash: Cultural Rights for National Majorities?
Required Readings:
Orgad, Liav. 2015. “Cultural Defense.” In The Cultural Defense of Nations: A Liberal Theory of Majority Rights, 85–131. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kaufmann, Eric P. 2018. “The Century of Whiteshift” and “Canadian Exceptionalism: Right-Wing Populism in the Anglosphere.” In Whiteshift: Populism, Immigration and the Future of White Majorities, 1–26 & 264–292. London: Allen Lane. (Focus on Introduction: pp. 1–26)
Inglehart, Ronald, and Pippa Norris. 2003. “The True Clash of Civilizations.” Foreign Policy 135: 62–70.
Mäkinen, Katariina. 2017. “Struggles of Citizenship and Class: Anti-Immigration Activism in Finland.” The Sociological Review 65(2): 218–234.
Gest, Justin. 2016. “The White Working-Class Minority: A Counter-Narrative.” Politics, Groups, and Identities 4(1): 126–143.
Ford, Robert, and Matthew Goodwin. 2010. “Angry White Men: Individual and Contextual Prediction of the Support for the British National Party.” Political Studies 58(1): 1–25.
Recommended:
Wodak, Ruth. 2017. “The ‘Establishment’, the ‘Élites’, and the ‘People’: Who’s Who?” Journal of Language and Politics 16(4): 551–565.
Lamont, Michèle, Bo Yun Park, and Elena Ayala-Hurtado. 2017. “Trump’s Electoral Speeches and His Appeal to the American White Working Class.” The British Journal of Sociology 68(S1): 153–180.
Brubaker, Rogers. 2017. “Between Nationalism and Civilizationism: The European Populist Moment in Comparative Perspective.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 40(8): 1191–1226.
Rovira Kaltwasser, Cristóbal, and Steven M. Van Hauwaert. 2020. “The Populist Citizen: Empirical Evidence from Europe and Latin America.” European Political Science Review 12(1): 1–18.
Week 9 (March 30): Transnational Elites and Selling (Out) Citizenship or COVID-19 and Old Wine in New Bottles?
Required Readings:
Goodhart, David. 2017. The Road to Somewhere: The Populist Revolt and the Future of Politics. London: C. Hurst & Co. Publishers Ltd. (Chapter tbc)
Surak, Kristin. 2020. “Millionaire Mobility and the Sale of Citizenship.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies: 1–24.
Fauser, Margit. 2020. “Emigrant Citizenship, Privileged Local Belonging and the Option to Return: Germans on the Turkish Coast.” Comparative Migration Studies 8(1): 7.
Kerwin, Donald, and Robert Warren. 2020. “US Foreign-Born Workers in the Global Pandemic: Essential and Marginalized.” Journal on Migration and Human Security 8(3): 282–300.
Recommended:
Harpaz, Yossi. 2019. “Conclusion: The Rise of the Sovereign Individual.” In Citizenship 2.0: Dual Nationality as a Global Asset. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Vink, Maarten, Hans Schmeets, and Hester Mennes. 2019. “Double Standards? Attitudes Towards Immigrant and Emigrant Dual Citizenship in the Netherlands.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 42(16): 83–101.
Gamlen, Alan, Chris Kutarna, and Ashby Monk. 2019. “Citizenship as Sovereign Wealth: Re-thinking Investor Immigration.” Global Policy 10(4): 527–541.
Power, Sally, Phillip Brown, Annabelle Allouch, and Gerbrand Tholen. 2013. “Self, Career and Nationhood: The Contrasting Aspirations of British and French Elite Graduates.” The British Journal of Sociology 64(4): 578–596.
Week 10 (April 6): Unbelonging, Deportation, and Citizenship Revocation
Required Readings:
Gaucher, Megan. 2018. “When Is a Citizen No Longer a Citizen? Analysing Constructions of Citizenship in Canada’s Judicial and Legislative Forums.” In Policy Change, Courts, and the Canadian Constitution, edited by Emmett Macfarlane, 269–289. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Asad, Asad L. 2020. “Latinos' Deportation Fears by Citizenship and Legal Status, 2007 to 2018.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 117(16): 8836–8844.
Ryo, Emily, and Ian Peacock. Forthcoming. “Denying Citizenship: Immigration Enforcement and Citizenship Rights in the United States.” Studies in Law, Politics, and Society.
Lepoutre, Jules. 2020. “When Losing Citizenship Is Fine: Denationalisation and Permanent Expatriation.” Citizenship Studies 24(3): 339–354.
Kapoor, Nisha, and Kasia Narkowicz. 2019. “Unmaking Citizens: Passport Removals, Pre-emptive Policing and the Reimagining of Colonial Governmentalities.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 42(16): 45–62.
Recommended:
Kerwin, Donald, Daniela Alulema, Michael Nicholson, and Robert Warren. 2020. “Statelessness in the United States: A Study to Estimate and Profile the US Stateless Population.” Journal on Migration and Human Security 8(2): 150–213.
Winter, Elke, and Ivana Previsic. 2019. “The Politics of Un-Belonging: Lessons from Canada’s Experiment with Citizenship Revocation.” Citizenship Studies 23(4): 338–355.
Kapoor, Nisha, and Kasia Narkowicz. 2019. “Characterising Citizenship: Race, Criminalisation and the Extension of Internal Borders.” Sociology 53(4): 652–670.
Banulescu-Bogdan, Natalia, and Meghan Benton. 2019. “Foreign Fighters: Will Revoking Citizenship Mitigate the Threat?” Migration Policy Institute.
Week 11 (April 13): Is Citizenship as Claims-Making Overcoming Nationalism?
Required Readings:
Menjívar, Cecilia, and Sarah M. Lakhani. 2016. “Transformative Effects of Immigration Law: Immigrants’ Personal and Social Metamorphoses through Regularization.” American Journal of Sociology 121(6): 1818–1855.
Isin, Engin. 2017. “Performative Citizenship.” In The Oxford Handbook of Citizenship, edited by Ayelet Shachar, Rainer Bauböck, Irene Bloemraad, and Maarten Vink, 500–523. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Casas-Cortes, Maribel. 2019. “Care-Tizenship: Precarity, Social Movements, and the Deleting/Re-Writing of Citizenship.” Citizenship Studies 23(1): 19–42.
Kingston, Lindsey N. 2019. Fully Human: Personhood, Citizenship, and Rights. New York: Oxford University Press. (Chapter tbc)
Bloemraad, Irene, and Kim Voss. 2019. “Movement or Moment? Lessons from the Pro-Immigrant Movement in the United States and Contemporary Challenges.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, January: 1–22.
Recommended:
Sirriyeh, Ala. 2019. “‘Felons Are Also Our Family’: Citizenship and Solidarity in the Undocumented Youth Movement in the United States.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 45(1): 133–150.
Bloemraad, Irene. 2018. “Theorising the Power of Citizenship as Claims-Making.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 44(1): 4–26.
Sanghera, Gurchathen, Katherine Botterill, Peter Hopkins, and Rowena Arshad. 2018. “‘Living Rights,’ Rights Claims, Performative Citizenship and Young People – The Right to Vote in the Scottish Independence Referendum.” Citizenship Studies 22(5): 540–555.
Paret, Marcel, and Shannon Gleeson. 2016. “Precarity and Agency through a Migration Lens.” Citizenship Studies 20(3–4): 277–294.