Citizenship Reimagined: A New Framework for State Rights in the United States

The United States is entering a new era of progressive state citizenship, with California leading the way. A growing number of states are providing expanded rights to undocumented immigrants that challenge conventional understandings of citizenship as binary, unidimensional, and exclusively national. In Citizenship Reimagined, Allan Colbern and S. Karthick Ramakrishnan develop a precise framework for understanding and measuring citizenship as expansive, multi-dimensional, and federated - broader than legal status and firmly grounded in the provision of rights. Placing today's immigration battles in historical context, they show that today's progressive state citizenship is not unprecedented: US states have been leaders in rights expansion since America's founding, including over the fight for black citizenship and women's suffrage. The book invites readers to rethink how American federalism relates to minority rights and how state laws regulating undocumented residents can coexist with federal exclusivity over immigration law.

Allan Colbern is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Arizona State University. He is a Presidential Award recipient from the Russell Sage Foundation and Carnegie Corporation, and his research has been featured in the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times.

S. Karthick Ramakrishnan is Professor of Public Policy at the University of California, Riverside and founding Director of its Center for Social Innovation. He is a trustee of The California Endowment, a Frederick Douglass 200 honoree, and has received major grants from the National Science Foundation, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and many other national and state foundations.