Punishing the “Others”: Citizenship and State Social Control in the United States and Germany

Michael T. Light, Purdue University

Despite ongoing debates on the continued legal significance of citizenship in a globalized world, cross-national tests of the salience of citizenship under the law have yet to be undertaken. This article combines data from U.S. and German courts with judge interviews from both countries to 1) estimate the punishment consequences of lacking state membership and 2) identify and explicate the mechanisms linking citizenship to punishment considerations. Findings show noncitizens receive increased punishment in U.S. and German courts net of legal factors, and the interviews suggest a variety of intervening mechanisms explain these results. Prominent among these is that judges in both countries resent that noncitizens would compound their immigrant status with criminal transgressions.