Citizenship from the Margins: Vernacular Theories of Rights and the State from the Interwar Caribbean

AbstractThis essay explores debates over political membership and rights within empire from the interwar British Caribbean. Although no formal status of imperial, British, or colonial citizenship existed in this era, British Caribbeans routinely hailed each other as meritorious local “citizens,” demanded political rights due them as “British citizens,” and decried rulers' failure to treat colored colonials equally with other “citizens” of the empire. In the same years, the hundreds of thousands of British West Indians who labored in circum-Caribbean republics like the United States, Panama, Cuba, Venezuela, and Costa Rica experienced firsthand the international consolidation of formal citizenship as a state-issued credential ensuring mobility and abode. This convergence pushed British Caribbeans at home and abroad to question the costs of political disfranchisement and the place of race within empire. The vernacular political philosophy they developed in response importantly complements the influential theories of citizenship and rights developed by European thinkers of the same generation, such as T. H. Marshall and Hannah Arendt.</jats:p

Nationality and migration in modern Mexico

Scholarship on nationalism and the state has examined how immigration and nationality policy create boundaries of inclusion and exclusion. While a handful of countries of immigration have been analysed extensively, explanations of nationality law have not accounted adequately for countries of emigration. This paper's historical analysis of Mexican nationality law and its congressional debate demonstrates that the ways the state has defined nationality at different periods cannot be attributed simply to demographic migration patterns or legacies of past understandings of ethnic or state-territorial nationhood, according to the expectations of received theory. The literature's focus on geopolitically stronger countries of immigration obscures the critical effects of inter-state politics on nationality law in subordinate states. Mexico's nationality laws reflect its experiences as a geopolitically weak country of immigration, despite a net out-migration of its population

L'analyse démographique de la mortalité au Mexique, 1940-1980

Diss. Doct. -- UCL. Institut de démographie, 198