Citizenship ceremonies have been practiced for at least a century in the United States. This article explores what citizenship ceremonies – the rituals created to ‘make’ new citizens – can tell us about understandings of citizenship and the nation. Focusing on the case of the US, the paper asks who is being held up as the welcomed citizen and who is excluded in these public events. What does it mean to ‘welcome’ a new citizen and how are migration and national history imagined in these events? These questions become increasingly urgent in the context of securitization and given current debates about the withdrawal of citizenship from suspected ‘extremists’
