The boundaries of social citizenship

A significant body of work demonstrates the powerful role that race has played in the growth, scope, and character of the American welfare state. Yet this literature has focused almost exclusively on Black-White relations, ignoring the role that immigration has had on the formation and evolution of U.S. welfare policies. This dissertation examines the role of race and immigration in the development of the early American welfare state by comparing the extension of social citizenship to Mexicans, European immigrants and Blacks in the first half of the twentieth century. Drawing on quantitative and qualitative data from government reports, archives, congressional debates, public opinion polls, the U.S. census, and the writings of contemporaries, this dissertation demonstrates that Blacks, Mexicans and European immigrants were each treated quite differently by the social welfare programs of the Progressive Era through the New Deal. European immigrants were largely included within the contours of social citizenship, Blacks were largely excluded, while Mexicans were offered limited inclusion at times, completely excluded at other times, and in some instances, expelled from the nation ent