Presentation Synopsis: In 1922 and 1923, the Supreme Court of the United States deliberated the eligibility of Asian immigrants for US citizenship. This talk draws on the state's regulation of naturalization in these cases to draw attention to the importance of racial capital in the development of legal status in the United States. It underlines how US citizenship was remade as a highly particularized legal status while US alienage was remade to produce a transitory and disposable labor force in the United States. It concludes by distinguishing how the struggle for US citizenship by Asian immigrants that defined the late nineteenth and early twentieth century frames the epistemological parameters and political vocabulary of immigration and naturalization reform to this very day.

Join us for the Interdisciplinary Series on Race, Ethnicity, and Inequality – Perspectives from Across the City with Dr. Hardeep Dhillon, American Bar Foundation/National Science Foundation Post-Doctoral Fellow in Law and Inequality at the ABF here in Chicago. This event series draws on the rich intellectual life of the broader city of Chicago to bring law students a sense of how questions of race, ethnicity, and inequality are understood and evaluated using other disciplinary tools. 

Monday, November 14, 2022
Room V
12:15 PM - 1:20 PM

Lunch will be available to registered participants. 

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