Title

Demography and the Social Contract

Author(s)

Marta Tienda Marta Tienda (Population Association of America)

Abstract

As the most demographically complex nation in the world, the United States faces ever more formidable challenges to fulfill its commitment to the democratic values of equity and inclusion as the foreign-born share of the population increases. Immigration, the major source of contemporary population diversification, provides several lessons about how to prepare for that future within a framework of social justice and how to realign recent demographic trends with cherished democratic principles. A review of historical and contemporary controversies about representation of the foreign born and alien suffrage both illustrates the re-emergence of ascriptive civic hierarchies and highlights some potentially deleterious social and civic consequences of recent demographic trends.

Creation Date

2002-04

Section URL ID

OPR

Paper Number

opr0204.pdf

URL

https://web.archive.org/web/20150906185837/http://opr.princeton.edu/papers/opr0204.pdf

File Function

Jel

J11

Keyword(s)

Suppress

false

Series

11