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The legal status of citizenship is constitutive in that it determines the boundaries of formal membership of a nation-state and, by implication, the lines of exclusion. The ways in which Australian law has defined membership over time – from subject status to citizen – provide a case study of the factors at play in understanding citizenship within a constitutional setting. We see that the constitution of citizenship may be a complex and unsettled evolutionary process.

This article identifies children’s rights as a neglected area in citizenship literature, both in socio-legal scholarship and in British nationality case law. It analyzes reasons for this neglect and posits that there exists a dichotomy in approaches to the wellbeing of children in the UK. The characterization of children’s interests and subsequent obligations owed by states to children are different in nationality law from other areas of law, notably, family law. Through our case study of the registration of children as British citizens, we argue that in the UK formal legal membership may appear achievable “in the books” but remains elusive in “law in action.” Children’s interests should be just as central to citizenship studies and nationality case law as to family law cases. A new approach to acquisition of British citizenship by children, with the best interests of the child as a critical evaluative principle at the heart of decision making, will usher in a new era. In the absence of such reconceptualization, children remain passive subjects of nationality law and their voices are unheard in processes of acquisition of citizenship.

While the Affordable Care Act (ACA) promised to reduce inequalities in insurance coverage between Latinos and non-Latinos by expanding coverage, it also excluded a large portion of noncitizen immigrants. Past research has demonstrated that among Latinos, further inequalities have developed between citizens and noncitizens after the ACA took effect, but it is unclear if this pattern is unique to Latinos or is evident among non-Latinos as well. I use data from the 2011 to 2016 waves of the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) (n = 369,386) to test how the relationship between citizenship status (native citizen, naturalized citizen, or noncitizen) and insurance coverage changed after the ACA, adjusting for health, demographic, and socioeconomic factors. I disaggregate the analysis by ethnicity to test whether this change differs between Latinos and non-Latinos. The analysis finds that after the ACA, naturalized citizens across ethnic groups moved toward parity with native citizens in health insurance coverage while the benefits of the ACA for noncitizens were conditional on ethnicity. For non-Latinos, lacking citizenship became less disadvantageous for predicting insurance coverage while for Latinos, lacking citizenship became even more disadvantageous in predicting insurance coverage. This bifurcation among noncitizens by ethnicity implies that while the ACA has strengthened institutional boundaries between citizens and noncitizens, this distinction is primarily affecting Latinos. The conclusion offers considerations on how legal systems of stratification influence population health processes.

Ideas of health-related deservingness in theory and practise have largely been attached to humanitarian notions of compassion and care for vulnerable persons, in contrast to rights-based approaches involving a moral-legal obligation to care based on universal citizenship principles. This paper aims to provide an alternative to these frames, seeking to explore ideas of a human rights-based deservingness framework to understand health care access and entitlement amongst precarious status persons in Canada.

Drawing from theoretical conceptualizations of deservingness, this paper aims to bring deservingness frameworks into the language of human rights discourses as these ideas relate to inequalities based on noncitizenship.

Deservingness frameworks have been used in public discourses to both perpetuate and diminish health-related inequalities around access and entitlement. Although, movements based on human rights have the potential to be co-opted and used to re-frame precarious status migrants as “undeserving”, movements driven by frames of human rights-based deservingness can subvert these dominant, negative discourses.

To date, deservingness theory has primarily been used to speak to issues relating to deservingness to welfare services. In relation to deservingness and precarious status migrants, much of the literature focuses on humanitarian notions of the “deserving” migrant. Health-related deservingness based on human rights has been under-theorized in the literature and the authors can learn from activist movements, precarious status migrants and health care providers that have taken on this approach to mobilize for rights based on being “human”.

The purpose of this article is to critically examine two possible solutions to the lack of citizenship rights of children who lack documentation. Many industrialized countries must deal with undocumented children who have resided in the country most of their lives. In the USA, immigrants brought as children by their parents illegally are not eligible to receive financial help in most states for higher education, receive federal health care, or obtain driver's licenses. Even if they are qualified, they cannot legally work.

The article provides an in-depth analysis of the Dream Act and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. The benefit of this study is to critically examine two possible solutions to the problem of undocumented children who have lived most of their lives in the USA.

The two solutions are analyzed in terms of broader conceptions of citizenship and human rights. Citizen rights are contested rights in the USA for undocumented immigrants and their children. It is found that theories of immigration and citizenship do not adequately explain the situation of undocumented childhood arrivals. After compulsory public education, undocumented students’ lives are at the mercy of state and federal administration policies. Citizenship theory is analyzed as it applies to undocumented immigrants brought as children to the USA.

This paper is limited to undocumented children in the USA.

The results point to the need for universal policies that will ensure young adults will have the critical resources and associated rights.

As Latinos become a large proportion of the US population, barriers to their continued education will impose significant economic and personal costs for individuals who have “identity without citizenship”.

This is among the first academic paper to link undocumented childhood arrivals in the USA, citizenship theory and public policy.

The changing articulation of citizenship is traced, both in relation to the national and the global. Conceiving of citizenship as an incompletely theorized contract between the state and the citizen, and locating her inquiry at that point of incompleteness, the author opens up the discussion to the making of the political. The central thesis is that the incompleteness of the formal institution of citizenship makes it possible for the outsider to claim for expanded inclusions. It is the outsider, whether a minoritized citizen or an immigrant, who has kept changing the institution across time and space. Times of unsettlement make this particularly visible. The current period of globalization is one such period, even though this is a partial unsettlement. New types of political actors are taking shape, changing the relationship between the state and the individual, and remaking the political.

The purpose of this study is to explore the concept that expatriate status, as opposed to national citizen status, may impact leader behavior. The intention is not to pursue a research question carved out from the expatriation and leadership research streams but rather to raise the issue of non-citizenship status as potentially moderating leader behavior.

The authors used grounded theory methodology, including interviews to gather data on the behavior of non-citizen leaders in the UAE. The resulting 28 interview transcripts were analyzed using inductive coding to arrive at aggregate theoretical dimensions.

Their findings reveal a keen tendency among expatriate leaders to display organizational legitimacy by remaining sedulously within established organizational schemata and monitoring employees closely.

The study asks, rather than answers, a question and does not use an established theoretical framework, as its area of concern is not one that fits solely within the literatures on expatriation, international business, leadership, cross-cultural management or national citizenship. Furthermore, the context in which they conduct our investigation is the UAE whose workforce has a disproportionately high number of expatriates. Although this serves as a convenient context in which to study the rising occurrence of non-citizen leaders due to increased professional migration, the issue may be more meaningfully tested in geopolitical contexts with typical expatriate–citizen workforce ratios.

The central theoretical contribution of this preliminary study is to provide initial empirical evidence suggesting that the hitherto-ignored variable of national citizenship may be a significant one to address given increasing professional global migration.

Asylum seekers, refugees and immigrants’ access to healthcare vary in South Africa and Cape Town due to unclear legal status. The purpose of this paper is to shed light on the source of this variation, the divergence between the 1996 South African Constitution, the immigration laws, and regulations and to describe its harmful consequences.

Based on legal and ethnographic research, this paper documents the disjuncture between South African statutes and regulations and the South African Constitution regarding refugees and migrants’ access to healthcare. Research involved examining South African jurisprudence, the African Charter, and United Nations’ materials regarding rights to health and health care access, and speaking with civil society organizations and healthcare providers. These sources inform the description of the immigrant access to healthcare in Cape Town, South Africa.

Asylum-seekers and refugees are entitled to health and emergency care; however, hospital administrators require documentation (up-to-date permits) before care can be administered. Many immigrants – especially the undocumented – are often unable to obtain care because of a lack of papers or because of “progressive realization,” the notion that the state cannot presently afford to provide treatment in accordance with constitutional rights. These explanations have put healthcare providers in an untenable position of not being able to treat patients, including some who face fatal conditions.

The research is limited by the fact that South African courts have not adjudicated a direct challenge to being refused care at healthcare facility on the basis of legal status. This limits the ability to know how rights afforded to “everyone” within the South African Constitution will be interpreted with respect to immigrants seeking healthcare. The research is also limited by the non-circulation of healthcare admissions policies among leading facilities in the Cape Town region where the case study is based.

Articulation of the disjuncture between the South African Constitution and the immigration laws and regulations allows stakeholders and decision-makers to reframe provincial and municipal policies about healthcare access in terms of constitutional rights and the practical limitations accommodated through progressive realization.

In South Africa, immigration statutes and regulations are inconsistent and deemed unconstitutional with respect to the treatment of undocumented migrants. Hospital administrators are narrowly interpreting the laws to instruct healthcare providers on how to treat patients and whom they can treat. These practices need to stop. Access to healthcare must be structured to comport with the constitutional right afforded to everyone, and with progressive realization pursued through a non – discriminatory policy regarding vulnerable immigrants.

This paper presents a unique case study that combines legal and social science methods to explore a common and acute question of health care access. The case is novel and instructive insofar as South Africa has not established refugee camps in response to rising numbers of refugees, asylum seekers and immigrants. South Africans thus confront a “first world” question of equitable access to healthcare within their African context and with limited resources in a climate of increasing xenophobia.

Drawing from theories of modernization and socioemotional selectivity, this study investigates the effect of familial support on the relationship between immigrant generation and mental health service use for Asian American and Latinx older adults.

Using the data from the National Latino and Asian American Study (NLAAS) 2002–2003, nested logistic regressions (N = 810) were used to test the effects of familial support (parent–child relationship quality) on the relationship between immigrant generation and the use of mental health services. Differences in familial support between older adults and their younger counterparts were also accounted for.

The results indicate that familial support partially attenuates the relationship between immigrant generation and mental health service use, but only for Latinx groups. Familial support was not significantly different for older adults than that of those younger in age.

Findings suggest the need for a better understanding of familial support as it relates to mental health service use for these groups. Approaches to improving the access to, and the overall use of, mental health services should be sensitive to ethnic variation. Immigrant groups may also endure stressors associated with legal and citizenship status. Future research should consider the effect of these political identities on mental health. Studies on parent–child relationship quality should also be longitudinal in order to better understand the dynamic nature of familial support across the life course.

This chapter addresses gaps in the literature as Asian Americans are relatively understudied group with regard to mental health. Previous studies showed that US-born Asian American and Latinx populations are more likely to use mental health services than their foreign-born counterparts, but the effects of generation status and familial support for older adults are unclear.