Öffentlicher Gastvortrag von

Sarah van Ruyskensvelde

Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium

Dienstag, 10. April 2018, 16 Uhr,
Universität Zürich, FRE-D-15,
Freiestrasse 36, 8032 Zürich

Naturalization, or the process through which citizenship is granted to a foreigner, is a process that has begun to increasingly look like that of the school. In the United States, as in many other countries, one of the main features of the naturalization is the civics test. This paper aims to document the historical development of naturalization procedures in the United States and shed light on how schoolish tools were introduced to decide who can be offered or denied American citizenship. Much of past research has critiqued the civics test for its unreliability, or difficult for even natives. We argue, however, that the current civics test is rather a product of a system that began without a solid foundation. In an attempt to avoid fraud and control efficiency, the USCIS has promoted the use of a test that devalues the importance of the choice to re-align loyalties to a country and regulates it to memory testing.

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