The Yale Center for the Study of Representative Institutions presents
Brendan A. Shanahan, Yale MacMillan Center Associate Research Scholar and Lecturer in History:
“Nativist Politics, Alienage Law, and Citizenship Rights in the United States 1865–1965.”
Rogers Smith, Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Emeritus Professor of Political Science, University of Pennsylvania, Beverly Gage, John Lewis Gaddis Professor of History, Yale, and Cristina Rodríguez, Deputy Dean and Leighton Homer Surbeck Professor of Law, Yale will each offer reflections on Disparate Regimes.
Isaac Nakhimovsky, Associate Professor of History and Humanities, Yale will moderate.
Disparate Regimes illustrates how state governments greatly shaped the political and economic rights available to noncitizen immigrants in the United States between 1865 and 1965. It argues that recurring disputes over the passage, implementation, and constitutionality of various expressions of nativist politics and alienage law created disparate regimes on a state-by-state basis and helped to invent many American citizenship rights as citizen-only rights from the time of the Civil War to the Civil Rights era. The book largely compares and contrasts the development of state policies governing noncitizen voting rights, anti-alien apportionment schemes, blue-collar nativist hiring laws, and anti-alien professional licensing requirements. It also interrogates whether and how the invention of many citizenship rights as citizen-only rights impacted marginalized Americans, particularly US-born women in the era of marital coverture law.
Refreshments will be served.