outlines the history of citizenship as a political concept, showing that the dominant view of citizenship today is still primarily seen as nationally provided and tied inextricably to legal status, despite global and urban scholars challenging its claims of exclusivity and immigration scholars challenging its singular focus on legal status. The limited power of these critiques is due, in part, to the fuzziness of claims regarding rights and identities. The authors make a fresh start in the systematic conceptualization of citizenship, showing that legal status is not the gateway to rights as is often assumed. In its place, they develop a concept of federated citizenship as a parallel set of rights along five key dimensions, with the provision of those rights varying by jurisdiction – federal, state, and local. They also lay out important differences between progressive citizenship, regressive citizenship, and reinforcing citizenship. Finally, they move from concept formation to the development of indicators for state citizenship regimes, which sets the stage for the empirical analysis is subsequent chapters on Black citizenship rights and immigrant citizenship rights.

The authors introduce the idea of California inaugurating a new wave of progressive state citizenship, with other states such as Connecticut, Illinois, Oregon, and New York also making significant moves toward expanded citizenship rights. They summarize their argument, challenging long-held views of American citizenship as an exclusively national concept and concerns that “states rights” are necessarily harmful for immigrants and communities of color. The authors offer a new framework of state citizenship that builds on recent works in progressive federalism as well as citizenship rights. Going from concept to application, the authors challenge the long history of civil rights scholarship that has steadfastly remained nationally oriented, showing that states have also played critical roles in expanding Black rights. They also challenge immigration scholarship to take seriously the role of states in expanding citizenship rights for unauthorized immigrants. Finally, they show how the framework of state citizenship offers a systematic way to understand expansions in the rights of women and LGBTQ populations, among other groups, throughout United States history.