My children, myself: Speaking for young citizens abroad

Abstract

Early activism by groups representing American citizens living abroad was motivated by parents' concerns about the citizenship status of children born outside the United States. In this essay I discuss a 1971-2 letterwriting campaign which involved American parents speaking on behalf of the rights of their minor children in a way that facilitated a simultaneous looking forward into the child's future, and looking backward to the parent's origins. Thus parents' representations of the child-citizen positioned them as agents of both nostalgia and futurity within the American family abroad. © 2009 Taylor & Francis.