Unsettled Citizens
Populism, global crisis, and modernity have rendered citizenship an ever-more fluid and troubled concept.
Even as millions of migrants from poorer countries struggle for citizenship in places like Canada, Europe, and the United States, wealthy families and individuals often have the means to purchase legal citizenship rights in a new country. Prominent court cases have granted the legal rights of citizens to corporations, which are themselves created by the government. Meanwhile, indigenous peoples frequently find their citizenship regulated by nation-states as well as tribal governments. In country after country, ethnic majorities are seeking laws to define citizenship based on race, language, and religion. In other settings, nations seek an ideal of citizenship that potentially erases biological, racial, and religious difference.
Our conference will explore all of these themes. In the first panel, we will debate the concept of economic citizenship, asking to what extent citizenship can be bought, constituted, or even lost by means of variation in wealth. In a second panel on citizenship and its gatekeepers, our discussion will explore how states, tribes, and other communities regulate belonging. And in the third panel, we will examine how migration and cross-border identity challenge the concept of citizenship.
For the past two years, the Radcliffe Institute has been pursuing a thematic focus on citizenship in the modern world, timed to coincide with the upcoming centennial of the 19th Amendment and the 150th anniversary of the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution. This conference will be the culmination of our two-year theme.
#UnsettledCitizens
Event Video
Economic Citizenship
WELCOME
Tomiko Brown-Nagin, Dean, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study; Daniel P.S. Paul Professor of Constitutional Law, Harvard Law School; and Professor of History, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
FRAMING REMARKS
Daniel Carpenter, faculty director of the social sciences program, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and Allie S. Freed Professor of Government, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
FEATURING
K. Sabeel Rahman, president, Demos; associate professor of law, Brooklyn Law School
Rosita Kaaháni Worl, president, Sealaska Heritage Institute
Zephyr Teachout, associate professor of law, Fordham University School of Law
Moderated by Kenneth W. Mack, Lawrence D. Biele Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
Citizenship and Its Gatekeepers
FEATURING
Jill Doerfler, department head and professor, Department of American Indian Studies, College of Liberal Arts, University of Minnesota Duluth
Pap Ndiaye, professor of history, Sciences Po (France)
Chia Youyee Vang, professor of history, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee
Moderated by Philip J. Deloria, professor of history and chair of the Committee on Degrees in History and Literature, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Carmen Yulín Cruz Soto
KEYNOTE ADDRESS
Carmen Yulín Cruz Soto, mayor, San Juan, Puerto Rico
Introduced by Gabriela Soto Laveaga , professor of the history of science, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Citizenship on the Move
FEATURING
Theresa McCarthy, associate professor in the Department of Transnational Studies, University at Buffalo
Alexandra Minna Stern, professor and chair of the Department of American Culture and professor in history, women’s studies, and obstetrics and gynecology, University of Michigan
Lyndsey Stonebridge, interdisciplinary chair and professor of humanities and human rights, Department of English Literature, University of Birmingham (UK)
Moderated by Jacqueline Bhabha, professor of the practice of health and human rights, Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health; director of research, Harvard FXB Center for Health and Human Rights; Jeremiah Smith, Jr. Lecturer in Law, Harvard Law School; and adjunct lecturer in public policy, Harvard Kennedy School
CLOSING REMARKS
Daniel Carpenter, faculty director of the social sciences program, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and Allie S. Freed Professor of Government, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
