Disrupting Americanism? A Critical and Empirical Analysis of State Policy Adoption

Abstract

Under what conditions do political actors collectively and repeatedly enact policies that define different forms of American membership? Departing from immigration research that characterizes policies as either inclusive or restrictive towards immigrants, I use intersectionality as a framework to differentiate between alienage policies that: enforce a static and homogenous American identity; affirm conceptually independent ascriptive categories of difference; and, allow for multiple categories of difference to intersect with each other. Using a new dataset of state legislative bills, I empirically test prominent state policy choice hypotheses to identify socioeconomic and political conditions that prompt the repeated enactment of similar alienage policies. Tracing the repeated enactment of alienage policies assesses a collective sense of urgency among elected officials to transcend traditional notions of Americanism in response to an increasingly diversifying population. My findings suggest that explanations centering on political elites, geographic region, or the salience of criminality are only able to explain the repeated enactment of policies that enforce a static and homogenous American identity. In order to understand why political actors collectively decide to confer full and equal membership to intersectionally disadvantaged alien residents, researchers must consider structural factors such as the collective potential of an alien workforce to disrupt local economies.