Factors Influencing Changing Meanings of Sovereignty

Rutgers University New Brunswick, New Brunswick NJ

Investigators

Abstract

Among many social scientists broadly, sovereignty has frequently been explored in relation to claims for political independence by one group of people from a larger entity. But anthropologists have documented many cases where groups of human beings find other methods for pursuing sovereignty than through the formation of autonomous nation-states. This project asks what factors influence human beings to seek sovereignty through means other than political independence. The project would aid public policy experts in their efforts to understand and anticipate social movements not only in the United States, where this research is taking place, but in other parts of the world where sovereignty claims have taken new form. In addition, the project would strengthen collaboration among scientists in the mainland U.S. and Puerto Rico, broaden the participation of underrepresented groups in the sciences, and train undergraduate and graduate students in methods of scientifically-grounded and empirical data collection. Dr. Yarimar Bonilla of Rutgers University explores how notions of citizenship and national identity are reimagined within contexts of shifting and disputed forms of sovereignty. The research explores the Puerto Rican statehood movement, an important site for answering this question as the movement has paradoxically gained popularity among those who have advocated other forms of sovereign status over annexation and statehood. As an unincorporated territory of the United States, Puerto Rico's relationship to the United States has long been ambiguous and misunderstood. Famously described as "foreign in a domestic sense," Puerto Rico is a space where notions of citizenship nationality are hotly debated. For many years the island's commonwealth status promised local residents "the best of both worlds" in the sense of offering US citizenship with a measure of local sovereignty. However, as the economy has stagnated over the past twenty years leading to failing infrastructure, a seemingly unpayable public debt, and historic levels of out-migration (resulting in a larger concentration of Puerto Ricans in the continental United States than in the Puerto Rican territory), a growing number of Puerto Ricans currently support political annexation to the United States. This project will examines how and why a large number of Puerto Ricans advocate for Puerto Rico to become the 51st state. Utilizing data collected through archival research, participant observation, surveys, focus groups and individual interviews, the PI will examine how statehood is imagined by its advocates and what problems it is deemed capable of solving. The findings of this research will have broad implications for thinking about the cultural meanings of citizenship in an era of shifting sovereignty and about the current landscape of political possibility in the United States and its margins.