ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to contests popular assumptions about the prepolitical nature of national belonging, tracing both state production of citizenship as a legal status and state production of citizenship as a form of political subjectivity or group identity. It demonstrates that gender was never the sole criterion for exclusion—race, ethnicity, religion, and sexuality have also figured prominently in the state's production of citizens. The chapter discusses the classic liberal democratic claims about "negative liberty" and the nature of equal citizenship, followed by a critique of liberal presumptions about the public/private distinction. Using historical and contemporary examples drawn from the United States, it then traces how raced-gendered-sexualized identities are produced through inclusion or exclusion from citizenship, particularly in relation to laws governing birthright, marriage, miscegenation, and immigration. In contrast to meaningful equality before the law, the chapter explores the intricate ways in which formal equality coexists with racial, ethnic, gender, and sexual hierarchies among citizens.
