Doctoral Dissertation Research: Citizenship Obligations in an Age of Rights

University Of California-San Diego, La Jolla CA

Investigators

Abstract

SES-1519088 Kwai NG Jane L. Lopez University of California-San Diego What is citizenship? Most media attention around citizenship focuses on rights -- the right to live freely in a country, the right to trial by jury, the right to education, and the right to social security and other social welfare benefits -- and access to those rights by both citizens and non-citizens. But citizenship is also composed of obligations, duties citizens must fulfill to the state in order for citizenship to function. In order to guarantee the right to trial by a jury of one's peers, citizens must serve as jurors; taxes paid by citizens are necessary to fund social welfare programs. In an era of rights-centered rhetoric and policy, this project seeks to re-examine the true substance of citizenship by studying the four legally-enforceable U.S. citizenship obligations -- jury duty, taxation, military service (the draft), and K-12 education -- and evaluating their ongoing role in making citizenship viable. This project will reassert the relevance of citizenship obligations in understanding the true meaning, function, and value of citizenship as a whole. The findings from this project will help explain how citizenship obligations are created, who fulfills them, how they are related to citizenship rights, and their role in sustaining the citizenship regime. Furthermore, this project will improve our understanding the role of citizenship obligations in fostering citizen investment and engagement with the state, clarifying the steps that lawmakers and citizens should take in order to improve the citizenship experience. Researchers of social movements, politics, national and international phenomena, migration, and the law have found that citizenship -- or "the right to have rights" bestowed by a state upon its members (Chief Justice Warren in Trop v. Dulles 1958) -- plays a key role in individual and group sense of belonging and the success of states. But as Chief Justice Warren's definition suggests, citizenship obligations have been greatly overshadowed in academic research and public discourse by citizenship rights, despite their equal significance in sustaining the citizenship relationship. Through a theoretically-grounded, mixed-methods research design, this project will examine the unique characteristics of each legally-enforceable U.S. citizenship obligation -- taxation, military service, jury duty, and education -- and their implications for citizenship theory and the citizenship experience. Utilizing a combination of quantitative, historical, and discourse analysis, this project will seek to answer the following questions, among others: How are citizenship obligations created and who fulfills them? Are citizenship obligations relevant in an age of rights and, if so, how? This project will address a gaping hole in the academic literature on citizenship. While most citizenship scholars have been content to "understand" citizenship as a whole from only the perspective of rights, this project will reassert the relevance of citizenship obligations in understanding the true meaning, function, and value of citizenship as a whole. The findings from this project will help explain how citizenship obligations are created, who fulfills them, how they are related to citizenship rights, and their role in sustaining the citizenship regime. This project provides both a theoretical and empirical case to the sociological cannon that will help answer some of the most basic questions about citizenship obligations, highlighting the importance of investigating both sides of the citizenship relationship. Furthermore, this project will improve our understanding the role of citizenship obligations in fostering citizen investment and engagement with the state, clarifying the steps that lawmakers and citizens should take in order to improve the citizenship experience and ensure its viability in the twenty-first century and beyond.