Synopses & Reviews
In Transforming Citizenship Raymond Rocco studies the exclusionary inclusion” of Latinos based on racialization and how the processes behind this have shaped their marginalized citizenship status, offering a framework for explaining this dynamic. Contesting this status has been at the core of Latino politics for more than 150 years. Pursuing the goal of full, equal, and just inclusion in societal membership has long been a major part of the struggle to realize democratic normative principles. This illuminating research demonstrates the inherent limitations of the citizenship regime in the United States for incorporating Latinos as full societal members and offers an alternative conception, associative citizenship,” that provides a way to account for and challenge the pattern of exclusionary belonging that has defined the positions of the Latinos in U.S. society. Through a critical engagement with key theorists such as Rawls, Habermas, Kymlicka, Walzer, Taylor, and Young, Rocco advances an original analysis of the politics of Latino societal membership and citizenship, arguing that the specific processes of racialization that have played a determinative role in creating and maintaining the pattern of social and political exclusions of Latinos have not been addressed by the dominant theories of diversity and citizenship developed in the prevalent literature in political theory.
Review
In this important new book, Raymond Rocco explores with conceptual clarity and originality the meaning of Latino politics and multicultural citizenship. Roccos intervention revitalizes the study of Chicano/Latino politics as social critique. This is a timely contribution to political theory and citizenship studieslucid, informed, and insightful.
Rodolfo D. Torres, University of California, Irvine
Synopsis
In Transforming Citizenship Raymond Rocco argues that traditional approaches and conceptions of citizenship in the United States are unable to account for the racialized marginalization of Latinos and develops an alternative framework for understanding the relationship between societal and political membership based on the novel notion of associative citizenship.
About the Author
Raymond A. Rocco is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of California at Los Angeles.