Regulating Transnational Citizens in the Post-1996 Welfare Reform Era: Dominican Immigrants in New York City
Greta A Gilbertson1
1Fordham University, Bronx, NY
Abstract
Drawing on interviews and observations of Dominican immigrants in New York City, in this paper I explore how immigrants articulate ideas of membership and belonging in the context of anti-immigrant legislation. I situate naturalization and citizenship as a process whereby immigrants accommodate and resist different forms of state power within transnational social spaces. How immigrants view and articulate citizenship in the contemporary period is tied to how state power produces complex and contradictory ideas regarding the meaning and nature of membership. I argue that immigrants both reject and embrace various aspects of state constructions of citizenship.
