Briana McGinnis

College of Charleston, Political Science, Faculty Member

Followers

160

Following

151

Mentions

Public Views

I am a political theorist, specializing in citizenship & belonging, the ethics of migration, punishment, and the history of political thought. I have complementary research and teaching interests in American political development, PPE, and public law.

I am especially interested in the often troubled relations between equal citizens, whether that manifests in the total rejection of exile or the loss of membership, the drift of particular moral judgments into constructions of criminality, or local-level issues of toleration and association.
Supervisors: Dissertation Committee: Richard Boyd (Chair), Rogers Smith, Douglas Reed and Post-doc Advisors: Jacob T. Levy, Victor Muñiz-Fraticelli, Richard Avramenko

less

InterestsView All (28)

Uploads

Papers by Briana McGinnis

Exile in America: Political Expulsion and the Limits of Liberal Government

Georgetown University-Graduate School of Arts & Sciences, 2015

Download

Exile as an Alternative to Incarceration

While terms like &quot;exile&quot; and &quot;banishment&quot; evoke dramatic imag... more While terms like &quot;exile&quot; and &quot;banishment&quot; evoke dramatic images of regimes distant in time or character from the modern liberal democracy, penal practices that rely on the geographic removal of offenders remain with such societies in the twenty-first century. This chapter evaluates the compatibility of banishment with different political orders.

Exile in America: Political Expulsion and the Limits of Liberal Citizenship

This article identifies and critiques the continued use of political expulsion—or exile—in Americ... more This article identifies and critiques the continued use of political expulsion—or exile—in American communities. Expulsion, I contend, is boundary construction in the guise of punishment or harm prevention. While expulsion may appear at first glance to be deeply illiberal, it is an integral part of the liberal governing toolkit. Its persistence challenges commonly held beliefs about liberal-democratic citizenship being a secure status premised on the voluntariness of membership, toleration for a plurality of moral values, and state neutrality. I argue that we ought to recognize judicial banishment, expulsions rooted in the moral emotion of disgust, and the banishment of marginalized community members as being fundamentally exilic practices, despite the apparent banality that tends to depoliticize them. Decisions to expel outline what the expelling community deems unacceptable in a member and so offer a way of defining the conditions of belonging.

Exile as an Alternative to Incarceration

Rethinking Punishment in the Age of Mass Incarceration, 2017

While terms like "exile" and "banishment" evoke dramatic images of regimes distant in time or cha... more While terms like "exile" and "banishment" evoke dramatic images of regimes distant in time or character from the modern liberal democracy, penal practices that rely on the geographic removal of offenders remain with such societies in the twenty-first century. This chapter evaluates the compatibility of banishment with different political orders.

Download

Beyond disenfranchisement: Collateral consequences and equal citizenship, penultimate draft (Final version in Politics, Groups, and Identities)

Politics, Groups, and Identities

While the risks that felony disenfranchisement poses to democracy are increasingly recognized, th... more While the risks that felony disenfranchisement poses to democracy are increasingly recognized, this article expands the scope of scholarly concern with mass conviction in the United States, examining the ways in which the ever-expanding panoply of state-imposed post-conviction legal restrictions (referred to as “collateral consequences of conviction”) diminish the experience of citizenship for those burdened with them and threaten democratic equality. Considering a sampling of common restrictions on the privacy, civic participation, and economic opportunities of former offenders, I argue that many common, easily overlooked collateral consequences can, in fact, produce a version of second-class American citizenship for the millions of people subject to them.

Download

Drafts by Briana McGinnis

Exile in America: Political Expulsion and Liberal Citizenship (Penultimate version, final version forthcoming in the Journal of Politics)

Journal of Politics, 2021

This article identifies and critiques the continued use of political expulsion – or exile – in Am... more This article identifies and critiques the continued use of political expulsion – or exile – in American communities, tracing common threads tying current practices together and analyzing the relationship between contemporary versions of exile and contested meanings of membership. Expulsion, I contend, is boundary-construction in the guise of punishment or harm prevention. While expulsion may appear at first glance to be deeply illiberal, it plainly remains part of the liberal governing toolkit. Its persistence challenges commonly held beliefs about liberal-democratic citizenship being a secure status premised on the voluntariness of membership, toleration for a plurality of moral values, and state neutrality. In exploring these questions, I consider three contexts in which current exile practices commonly manifest: judicial banishment, expulsions rooted in the moral emotion of disgust, and the banishment of marginalized community members. I argue that we ought to recognize the practices outlined here as being fundamentally exilic, despite the apparent banality that tends to depoliticize them. Decisions to expel outline what the expelling community deems unacceptable in a member, and so offer a way of defining the conditions of belonging.

Download

Exile in America: Political Expulsion and the Limits of Liberal Government

Georgetown University-Graduate School of Arts & Sciences, 2015

Download

Exile as an Alternative to Incarceration