Fifteenth International Conference on Interdisciplinary Social Sciences

Abstract

Access to fundamental social and political rights is usually linked to national citizenship. This results in a stratification of rights according to legal status as well in the exclusion of certain immigrant populations from political participation. Although not widely known, forty of the fifty states in the U.S. allowed “alien suffrage” – voting by noncitizens – from it’s founding to 1926, facilitating civic education, participation, and citizenship. Today, immigrant advocates are rediscovering this rich history and have successfully restored noncitizen voting rights in a dozen jurisdictions. Globally, at least forty five countries on nearly every continent allows noncitizen voting at the local, regional or national level, most extensively in the EU. This paper sheds light on these laws and practices, their impacts, and their implications for social science. I discuss the possibilities and pitfalls of “subnational citizenship” in the US and the EU. What are the strengths and challenges to these laws and practices? Have they advanced immigrant concerns and interests, or have they made immigrants greater targets for detention and deportation? Although restrictive immigration enforcement makes such laws and policies increasingly risky, I present data from research conducted during the past sixteen years that shows how immigrants have created new forms of participatory belonging, scoring important gains. The rising presence of immigrants in states and cities, coupled with the establishment of noncitizen voting, has important implications for theories of citizenship, voting rights, and democracy.