As immigrants account for an increasing proportion of American youth, understanding how these young people experience change in their citizenship status is an important, yet rarely examined area for research. There is a plethora of evidence that opportunities to participate in American society are stratified according to class, race and ethnicity.…

This article raises questions at the intersection of immigration, citizenship, and formal civics education. Drawing from positioning theory and critical discourse analysis, this article contrasts episodes in two twelfth-grade classrooms taught by the same teacher. In the general education government class, the teacher registered students to vote,…