ABSTRACT
This chapter considers acts of irregularizing citizenship through its accidents in the cases of two US citizens, Yaser Esam Hamdi and Anwar al-Awlaki. The ‘accidental citizen’ describes that person who acquires their US citizenship through birth on US territory, but who is represented as lacking the substance, the essence of American citizenship. Both Hamdi and al-Awlaki are legally citizens, but the discourse of the accident implies that they were not meant to be citizens. According to US law, there is no essential/accidental divide. All citizens are essential. Birthright citizenship entered the common law tradition with Calvin’s Case of 1608, which invoked the concept of ‘ligeance’ to legitimize the bonding of subjects to monarchs from birth. The concept of the accident is invoked with increasing commonality across the humanities and social sciences.
