Citizenship and Governance in a Changing City: Somerville, MA

5. Immigrant Civic and Political Engagement

5 immigrant Civic and Political engagement T his chapter examines three key events in Somerville in recent years that called out organized civic and political engagement by immigrant residents and their advocates and allies. All three events threatened immigrant safety and security. To the extent that engagement is limited to this kind of occasion, i argue that the city’s immigrants are restricted in their participation in public affairs. i base this argument in the view that, when people have access to the benefits of social citizenship, they are “able to act . . . for the common good, rather than out of [their own] . . . immediate needs” (Glenn 2000: 7).1 i locate the participation, or lack of participation, of immigrants in community affairs within a larger framework of a struggle over social citizenship . As i have explained, social citizenship is not simply a legal status. it refers rather to an invitation to full participation, membership, and a sense of belonging to a community (Bloemraad 2006: 1; Glenn 2011: 3; marshall 1964). Social citizenship is, then, about inclusion and exclusion. For example , while U.S. non-citizens are excluded from the right to vote and from military service, they are (theoretically) included in basic civil rights, such as freedom of speech and due process, and social entitlements, such as access to public education (Glenn 2000: 12). Citizenship, in this sense, is a socially constructed category “continually transformed through political struggle” (Glenn 2000: 3). 82 Chapter 5 research about U.S. immigrants has, until very recently, had little to say about civic and political engagement. The incorporation of immigrants into public and community life has been largely neglected in favor of studies of social mobility and assimilation (ramakrishnan and Bloemraad 2008a: 9). local contexts are an especially important (and understudied) area for understanding immigrant incorporation because, while federal immigration policy determines who may enter the United States, it leaves to local actors all of the issues that arise when immigrants actually come to live in host communities (Farris 2003: 5; light 2006). While some local U.S. communities have established policies to exclude immigrants from civic and political participation (varsanyi 2010), urban locales sometimes institute policies and practices explicitly aimed at including newer immigrants and their concerns in community affairs (ramakrishnan and Bloemraad 2008a: 24; Wells 2004). A few cities have even extended to non-citizens the right to vote in local elections.2 Chicago, for example, has for many years allowed non-citizen residents to vote for members of the school board. Before exploring immigrant participation in Somerville, i provide some national and massachusetts state-level context. The United States today is deeply polarized on the issue of immigration, and immigrants to this country are far less likely to become legal citizens compared with nations such as Canada. in 2001, for example, only 40 percent of U.S. foreign-born residents were legal citizens compared with 72 percent in Canada (Bloemraad 2006: 2). in massachusetts, of nearly 300,000 legal immigrants eligible for citizenship, only 10 percent claimed citizenship in 2008 (Sacchetti 2009b). The main reason for this discrepancy between the United States and Canada appears to be how differently these two nations receive immigrant residents (Bloemraad 2006). in recent decades, U.S. immigration policy has been concerned mainly with border control and placing strict limits on who is allowed into the country. U.S. policy neither encourages nor supports immigrants to pursue legal citizenship. Canada, in contrast, is guided by a policy of multi-culturalism that urges immigrants to become citizens and assists them in so doing. it allows immigrant residents to retain dual citizenship , has a three-year residency requirement (versus five in the United States), and provides various government supports, such as funding english classes and providing job search assistance (Bloemraad 2006).3 These two nations, similar in many ways, offer useful examples of contrasting sides in the debate articulated in Chapter 1. Should receiving nations act affirmatively to incorporate immigrants into both legal and social citizenship , as Canada does? or is it sufficient, as in the United States, to simply immigrant Civic and Political engagement 83 offer immigrants who decide on their own to seek legal citizenship the same rights as citizens? To apply for U.S. citizenship, immigrants must be permanent residents for at least five years, or three years if married to a U.S. citizen. once the application process is complete, in massachusetts, it...