Nationality law in Britain is liberal and expansive in making it possible for immigrants to become citizens. Nonetheless, long-term residents, who are educated and possess skills that are important for the British economy, still face significant barriers to citizenship. This book offers insights into the experiences of long-term residents who have successfully become British citizens, through their own stories and newly commissioned illustrations of the journey of immigration. The goal is to explain the gap between formal law and law in practice, but the focus of the book is not solely on barriers--Devyani Prabhat also explores the feelings of belonging and empowerment that people experience during the citizenship journey.

Pursuing Citizenship in the Enforcement Era provides readers with the everyday perspectives of immigrants on what it is like to try to integrate into American society during a time when immigration policy is focused on enforcement and exclusion. The law says that everyone who is not a citizen is an alien. But the social reality is more complicated. Ming Hsu Chen argues that the citizen/alien binary should instead be reframed as a spectrum of citizenship, a concept that emphasizes continuities between the otherwise distinct experiences of membership and belonging for immigrants seeking to become citizens. To understand citizenship from the perspective of noncitizens, this book utilizes interviews with more than one-hundred immigrants of varying legal statuses about their attempts to integrate economically, socially, politically, and legally during a modern era of intense immigration enforcement. Studying the experiences of green card holders, refugees, military service members, temporary workers, international students, and undocumented immigrants uncovers the common plight that underlies their distinctions: limited legal status breeds a sense of citizenship insecurity for all immigrants that inhibits their full integration into society. Bringing together theories of citizenship with empirical data on integration and analysis of contemporary policy, Chen builds a case that formal citizenship status matters more than ever during times of enforcement and argues for constructing pathways to citizenship that enhance both formal and substantive equality of immigrants.

This volume is part of a series of 18 monographs service learning and the academic disciplines. This collection of essays focuses on the use of service learning as an approach to teaching and learning in political science. Following an Introduction by Richard M. Battistoni and William E. Hudson, the four essays in Part 1, "Service-Learning as a Mode of Civic Education," develop a theoretical framework for understanding service learning; titles include: "The Decline of Democratic Faith" (Jean Bethke Elshtain); "Teaching/Theorizing/Practicing Democracy: An Activist's Perspective on Service-Learning in Political Science" (Meta Mendel-Reyes); "The Work of Citizenship and the Problem of Service-Learning" (Harry C. Boyte and James Farr); and "Examining Pedagogy in the Service-Learning Classroom: Reflections on Integrating Service-Learning into the Curriculum" (Karen D. Zivi). Chapters in Part 2, "Course Narratives," provide practical how-to guidance; including: "Community Service-Learning as Practice in the Democratic Political Arts" (Gregory B. Markus); "Service-Learning in the Study of American Public Policy" (William E. Hudson); "Political Theory" (James Farr); "Research Methods" (Daniel J. Palazzolo); "Women and Citizenship: Transforming Theory and Practice" (Cynthia R. Daniels); "Politics, Community, and Service" (Richard Guarasci); "Civil Rights and Liberties" (Bill Swinford); "Service-Learning and Comparative Politics: A Latin American Saga" (Robert H. Trudeau); "The Police Corps: Researching Teaching and Teaching Research" (Milton Heumann); and "Bringing Service and Politics Together: A Community College Perspective" (Mona Field). The essays in Part 3, "The Discipline and Beyond," examine more general concerns; they include: "Experiencing Government: Political Science Internships" (Stephen Frantzich and Sheilah Mann); "Service-Learning and Empowerment" (Ed Schwerin); "Civic Leadership" (Richard A. Couto). An Afterword by Benjamin R. Barber closes the text. Appended are a 10-item annotated bibliography and a annotated list of service-learning courses in political science offered at various colleges and universities. (All essays include references.) (SM)

States have historically led in rights expansion for marginalized populations and remain leaders today on the rights of undocumented immigrants.

Contrary to predictions that it would become increasingly redundant in a globalizing world, citizenship is back with a vengeance. The Oxford Handbook of Citizenship brings together leading experts in law, philosophy, political science, economics, sociology, and geography to provide a multidisciplinary, comparative discussion of different dimensions of citizenship: as legal status and political membership; as rights and obligations; as identity and belonging; as civic virtues and practices of engagement; and as a discourse of political and social equality or responsibility for a common good. The contributors engage with some of the oldest normative and substantive quandaries in the literature, dilemmas that have renewed salience in today's political climate. As well as setting an agenda for future theoretical and empirical explorations, this Handbook explores the state of citizenship today in an accessible and engaging manner that will appeal to a wide academic and non-academic audience. Chapters highlight variations in citizenship regimes practiced in different countries, from immigrant states to 'non-western' contexts, from settler societies to newly independent states, attentive to both migrants and those who never cross an international border. Topics include the 'selling' of citizenship, multilevel citizenship, in-between statuses, citizenship laws, post-colonial citizenship, the impact of technological change on citizenship, and other cutting-edge issues. This Handbook is the major reference work for those engaged with citizenship from a legal, political, and cultural perspective. Written by the most knowledgeable senior and emerging scholars in their fields, this comprehensive volume offers state-of-the-art analyses of the main challenges and prospects of citizenship in today's world of increased migration and globalization. Special emphasis is put on the question of whether inclusive and egalitarian citizenship can provide political legitimacy in a turbulent world of exploding social inequality and resurgent populism.

This study of citizenship and migration policies in the Gulf shows how temporary residency can become a permanent citizenship status.

The numbers are staggering: One-third of America’s adult population has passed through the criminal justice system and now has a criminal record. Many more were never convicted, but are nonetheless subject to surveillance by the state. Never before has the American government maintained so vast a network of institutions dedicated solely to the control and confinement of its citizens. A provocative assessment of the contemporary carceral state for American democracy, Arresting Citizenship argues that the broad reach of the criminal justice system has fundamentally recast the relation between citizen and state, resulting in a sizable—and growing—group of second-class citizens. From police stops to court cases and incarceration, at each stage of the criminal justice system individuals belonging to this disempowered group come to experience a state-within-a-state that reflects few of the country’s core democratic values. Through scores of interviews, along with analyses of survey data, Amy E. Lerman and Vesla M. Weaver show how this contact with police, courts, and prisons decreases faith in the capacity of American political institutions to respond to citizens’ concerns and diminishes the sense of full and equal citizenship—even for those who have not been found guilty of any crime. The effects of this increasingly frequent contact with the criminal justice system are wide-ranging—and pernicious—and Lerman and Weaver go on to offer concrete proposals for reforms to reincorporate this large group of citizens as active participants in American civic and political life.