By the late nineteenth century the prevailing ethno-nationalist ethos of the day established that noncitizens were incapable of federal citizenship because of both racial distinctions and questions about their loyalty. At the same time, however, local citizenship was coming to be understood as something entirely different, determined by mobility and choice rather than loyalty and identity. Some cities have accordingly granted the right of suffrage to noncitizen residents on the grounds that they share a common interest with other local residents in the provision of municipal services. Perhaps more importantly, cities are required to give noncitizens many “social rights” that have increasingly come to be synonymous with citizenship, such as education and security. Noncitizens have been granted these social rights on the premise that such rights should be distributed based on residence rather than nationality. In order to make local citizenship a matter of private consumer choice, local services are bundled together with residence so that local “consumer-voters” can more efficiently shop for municipalities in which to settle.

Chapter 2 details how the distinction between the public and private spheres of citizenship has been implemented through jurisdictional scale, or federalism. Through a mosaic of laws regarding suffrage, immigration, education and public benefits, zoning, civil rights and others, our federal system has designated the national government as the public sphere of identity and civic activity, and local governments as the private sphere of the market and the family. The potential for conflict among the various conceptions of citizenship is muted because their contradictory components are divided into separate spheres and each is then confined to its designated sphere. This chapter also describes, however, how globalization has caused the public/private distinction to break down, and with it, the line between local and national citizenship to become blurred. As that has happened, the contradictions among the three conceptions of citizenship have become more pronounced, resulting in a crisis in the meaning of citizenship and increasing hostility between cities and the state.