ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses 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 deals with 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. The chapter traces how raced-gendered-sexualized identities are produced, contested, and negotiated through inclusion or exclusion from citizenship, particularly in relation to laws governing birthright, marriage, miscegenation, and immigration. It explores the intricate ways in which formal equality coexists with racial, ethnic, class, gender, and sexual hierarchies among citizens. The chapter considers state complicity in the discursive production of racialized and sexualized political subjectivities through welfare policymaking and the exercise of biopower. The guarantee of equal political rights offers the assurance to individuals and to groups that their views will receive due consideration in the policymaking process.
