Perpetual Immigrant and the Limits of Athenian Democracy

In the fifth and fourth centuries BCE, immigrants called ''metics'' (metoikoi) settled in Athens without a path to citizenship. Galvanized by these political realities, classical thinkers cast a critical eye on the nativism defining democracy''s membership rules and explored the city''s anxieties over intermingling and passing. Yet readers continue to treat immigration and citizenship as separate ...