Acquiring and Exercising Citizenship: The New Second Generation in the United States

Renee Luthra (1) , Thomas Soehl (2) , Roger Waldinger (3)

1 University of Essex
2 McGill University = Université McGill [Montréal, Canada]
3 UCLA - University of California [Los Angeles]

This paper focuses on the ways in which the distinctively international aspects of population movements across borders affects the experience of the children of immigrants raised in the United States or born in the United States themselves. The international impinges directly on the acquisition and exercise of citizenship, the topics treated in this chapter. On the one hand, every emigrant departs as a home country citizen to arrive as a destination country alien, a status less tractable to individual initiative than was the initial decision to seek a better life in a new land. For those who enjoy the possibility of acquiring a new citizenship and successfully exercise that option, the acquisition of citizenship marks the transition from the old nationality to the new. On the other hand all immigrants in a democratic society can exercise citizenship, as mere territorial presence confers the right to engage in a broad, though not, full panoply of civic and political activities. Yet to access these different options for involvement, however, immigrants need the resources required for understanding a strange, new environment and for engaging with civic and political matters at least one step removed from the demands of everyday survival.

Mots clés: United States; Immigrants; Emigrants; Citizenship

Domaines: Sociologie

Renee Luthra, Thomas Soehl, Roger Waldinger. Acquiring and Exercising Citizenship: The New Second Generation in the United States. 2016. ⟨hal-03469905⟩