Will to love,will to fear: the emotional politics of illegality and citizenship in the campaign against birthright citizenship in the US

Anti-immigration activists argue that the broad inclusivity of the birthright citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment is a national security concern that enables criminalized migrant mothers to give birth to citizens who can later harm the US through violence and resource consumption. Seeing this argument as representative of the problem of inclusivity inherent to citizenship in a liberal democracy, this essay asks how the children of undocumented and temporary migrants are constructed as what Mae Ngai calls ‘alien citizens.’ Drawing from Sara Ahmed's affective economy of emotion, I find that affect and emotion figure prominently in how citizens are made ‘alien.’ Specifically love and fear function as pivot points in the anti-birthright citizenship argument, wherein the ‘real citizen’ is ‘willed’ to love and be loved by the nation and to fear the nation's Others. Moreover, the emphasis on national feelings does not evacuate white supremacy or heteronormativity from its imagination of citizenship, but instead displaces these loci of power into feeling and affect. Thus, this essay claims that the birthright citizenship argument illustrates how national love and fear work in tandem to uphold, naturalize, and expand the racial and sexual exclusions inherent to citizenship in a nation-state.     

“L” is for Looking Again

This paper focuses on an important aspect of the Showtime television series The L Word: its exploration of the representation of gender and sexuality in contemporary visual art. The program presents a sophisticated feminist perspective on the histories of female and lesbian representation, and it uses the work of particular contemporary artists, who are known for their engagement with questions of female, lesbian, and/or queer representation, to advance its critique of a long history of erasure, misrepresentation, and objectification. Simultaneously, while foregrounding its awareness of the contradictions of trying to create new forms of representation in a thoroughly commercial and commodified context, the program uses works of art to present the possibility of inventing alternative images or of redefining existing ones. The show's consistent attention to innovative art constitutes a formal device that offers a counter-discourse to those conventions of representation required by the show's need to appeal to a broad audience. In this way, The L Word offers attentive viewers new ways to look at and think about apparently familiar images and narratives.     

V. Some factors in the etiology of maternal rejection

A Handbook of Child Welfare: Context, Knowledge and Practice. Joan Laird and Ann Hartman. (New York: Free Press, 1985.)

The Altruistic Imagination: A History of Social Work and Social Policy in the United States. John H. Ehrenreich. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 1985)

Child Psychosis in the First Four Years of Life. Henry N. Massie and Judith Rosenthal. (New York: McGraw‐Hill Book Co., 1984.)

The Aggressive Adolescent. Charles Keith (Ed.). (New York: The Free Press, 1984.)

Piagetian Dimensions of Clinical Relevance. Hugh Rosen. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985.)     

The Development of Self-Efficacy Beliefs of Widowed and Abandoned Women Through Microcredit Self-Help Groups: The Case of Rural South India

ABSTRACT

Widowed or abandoned women are among the poorest and marginalized people in Indian society. In an effort to empower these women to achieve a sustainable livelihood and overcome discrimination related to marital status and caste, a local nongovernmental organization, Kalangarai, organized widows and abandoned women into microcredit self-help groups (SHGs) along the Southeast coast of India. This mixed-methods study examines the effects of microcredit SHG training and facilitation on the perceived self-efficacy of widowed or abandoned women in the groups (N = 64). Data were collected on SHG training, facilitation, self-efficacy, well-being, and caste discrimination. Regression results indicate that participation in SHG trainings and having more intensive staff facilitation significantly impacted the women's perception of self-efficacy. These findings suggest that the microcredit SHG structure can be utilized to spark a transformative process for women to collectively gain power and political voice. Further implications for advocacy, scholarship, and program design are discussed.     

Job-Seeking Behavior in Young Adults: Do Unemployment Insurance Benefits Hurt Job Search Efforts?

ABSTRACT. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the association between extended unemployment insurance (UI) benefits and young adults’ job-seeking behavior. In particular, the study evaluated if the extension of UI benefits to 99 weeks in 2008 had direct effects on job search efforts. Three waves (2007–2009) of data (N = 915) from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth were analyzed using multiple regression models to assess the association of UI benefits to young adults’ job search efforts. Additionally, the homogeneity of slope coefficients of the UI benefit on job search effort was evaluated across 3 years using an analysis of covariance (ANCOVA). The results of regression analyses suggest that UI benefits were negatively associated with job search efforts for 2007 and the pooled sample of 2007 to 2009, but the relationship was not significant for 2008 and 2009. The results of the ANCOVA suggest that the UI benefit extension of 2008 did not have any negative association with job search efforts. Future studies should explore the subjective experiences and decisions young adults make in consideration of unemployment, UI benefits, and job search efforts.     

A Qualitative Study of Non-Affiliated,Non-Scientist Institutional Review Board Members

In addition to outlining criteria for the approval of human subjects research, federal regulations provide guidance regarding local institutional review board (IRB) membership. IRBs are mandated to include “at least one member whose primary concerns are in nonscientific areas” and “at least one member who is not otherwise affiliated with the institution.” Often a single individual serves both of these roles simultaneously. Although there have been calls for increased representation of lay community members on IRBs, little is known regarding their experiences or their perceptions of human subject protections and the IRB process. Using an ethnographic interview approach, this study seeks to gain a perspective from non-affiliated, non-scientist (NA/NS) IRB members about the process in which they participate. Findings suggest a need for clarification regarding whom NA/NS IRB members represent. They also suggest that NA/NS IRB members’ experiences could be improved by an increased show of respect from the IRB chair, other members, and staff; efforts to make participation more convenient for these volunteer members; and training tailored specifically to NA/NS members. Further research on this important and understudied topic is needed to determine best practice and policy recommendations.     

Unintended Population Consequences of Policies

Unintended population consequences of policies stem from three sources: (1) A policy overshoots its original goal; (2) different policies conflict, so that the implementation of one policy inhibits implementation of another policy; (3) negative consequences of a policy are unforeseen, or are anticipated but judged unlikely to be severe or considered less important than the positive aims of the policy. Examples from Singapore, South Africa, Italy, the U.S., and the former Soviet Union are discussed.