'Disparate Regimes provides important new insights into neglected aspects of citizenship history. Rejecting the binary framework for understanding U.S. citizenship in contrast to alien immigrants with no rights, Shanahan's book shows in fine detail how American citizenship by turns stretched and retracted for over a century to cover some groups in certain parts of the country while excluding others from meaningful citizen rights. From the decline of the franchise for non-citizens to the struggle over counting immigrants in the apportionment of electoral districts, the work presents a rich history of long neglected topics. Disparate Regimes fills an important gap in the history of U.S. citizenship and its changing impact on national politics.

' -- Dorothee Schneider, Teaching Professor Emerita, University of Illinois. Author of Crossing Borders: Migration and Citizenship in the Twentieth-Century United States'In Disparate Regimes, canvassing the period from 1865 to 1965, Brendan Shanahan traces the shifting, complex, and contradictory politics through which rights associated with citizenship became rights for citizens only. In so doing, Shanahan fills an important gap in the history of U.S. immigration and citizenship law and adds a crucial dimension to our understanding of American citizenship.' -- Kunal Parker, University of Miami. Author of Making Foreigners'In the fight for power in America in the nineteenth century, defining and redefining "the people" in each state built a crazy quilt of policies allocating political representation, voting rights, and good jobs. Shanahan explains how state-level politics in the twentieth century drove a turn toward a more uniform system across the country, one that assigned some basic rights to citizens alone.

This deeply researched, impressively capacious book reveals how nativist and anti-immigrant politics indelibly shaped a national system of well-defined, exclusive, and consequential citizenship rights: it will prove itself a timeless book on a very timely topic.' -- Dan Bouk, author of Democracy's Data.