Unintentional Residence and the Right to Vote

Democratic theory offers robust resources in order to defend the claim that noncitizens are, in many cases, entitled to the right to vote in their place of residence, regardless of their citizenship. On this, Avner de Shalit and I are in broad agreement. But the route we take to justify this right rests on substantially different argumentation: whereas I believe that residence is necessary and sufficient to justify the right to vote at the municipal and, more controversially, at the national level, de Shalit believes that noncitizens must also intend to reside in a city over the longer term in order to merit the right to vote on city matters. I will argue that this focus on intention is dangerous for the most vulnerable of city dwellers, who are most in need of the right to vote, even if only at the city level. In particular, I argue that the only way that the right to vote can play its protective role is if it is available to migrants on the basis of residence, regardless of their stated intention.     

Uncertainty and the Avoidance of the State of One's Family in Stepfamilies,Postdivorce Single‐Parent Families,and First‐Marriage Families

The current study tested the applicability of uncertainty management theory (URT; Berger & Calabrese, 1975) to information‐regulation efforts in families with comparatively different uncertainty levels. Differences in uncertainty and avoidance for parents within the various family types are also discussed. In general, the findings lend further support for URT (e.g., Brashers, 2001) which suggests that in certain situations, such as that of postdivorce family life, individuals may prefer to maintain their uncertainty through avoidance. Contrary to what URT suggests, the association between uncertainty about one's family relationships and the avoidance of the state of one's family was positive and linear for adolescents and young adults in stepfamilies and postdivorce, single‐parent families. For first‐marriage families, however, this association was curvilinear in nature. Unexpectedly, closeness with one's parents or stepparents did not moderate this association for any of the family types. Nevertheless, satisfaction with one's parents was a moderator for children in first‐marriage families. The degree of uncertainty in stepfamilies was also a function of the length of time in the stepfamily, but avoidance was not.