Collaborative Research Networks
Organizers
Elizabeth Keyes, Dylan Farrell-Bryan, Eunice Lee, Hillary Mellinger
Issues of citizenship and immigration are critical to understanding ways that individuals and groups are created and marginalized. Within this collaborative research network, “citizenship,” is defined broadly, to include legal status, membership rights, civic involvement, social participation, and linkages to structures that delimit, transcend, and/or deconstruct the nation-state. It is also important to understand the discourses and practices that implicitly or explicitly define citizenship in particular contexts. Thus, race, gender, national origin, religion, ethnicity, social class and other markers of membership or exclusion may subtly or violently shape the claiming or attribution of citizenship in practice. Moreover, globalizing and transnational processes may reshape both citizenship and exclusion, positioning individuals and groups within and outside of multiple legal orders. Immigration is clearly one such process, and, given the war on terrorism and the restructuring of immigration in the United States and the sharpening of inequality internationally, it is crucial to examine how movements, non-movements, rights, and statuses are being distributed by nation-states and, sometimes, other entities.
Through the annual meetings of the Law and Society Association, the Citizenship and Immigration Collaborative Research Network provides a forum in which scholars and practitioners who are interested in these issues can organize discussions, share work, and exchange ideas. In the past, we have met to compare research interests in diverse national settings, and we have organized panels and roundtables on citizenship and immigration. Relevant topics for papers and panels might include comparative analyses of immigration policies, the ways that subordinate groups are positioned vis-à-vis the nation-state and transnational entities, the redefinition of citizenship in global and transnational contexts, developments in asylum and human rights, the nature of inclusion and exclusion in particular settings, the forms that citizenship and immigration assume, analyses of significant legal cases or international agreements, ways that the U.S. war on terrorism is affecting immigrants’ rights, and so forth. Interested colleagues and researchers can join the listserv by emailing Miranda Hallett at mhallett1@udayton.edu.