Moral Lines of Credit: Forging Race Projects, Citizenship, and Nation on Online U.S. Spousal Reunification Forum

REVISION MEMO

MORAL LINES OF CREDIT: FORGING RACE PROJECTS, CITIZENSHIP, AND NATION ON ONLINE U.S. SPOUSAL REUNIFICATION FORUMS

I thank the reviewers and the editor-in-charge for the thoughtful feedback and commentary on this manuscript. I have seriously considered and implemented your comments and feedback. They significantly improved the paper. Below, I detail how I addressed the suggestions. Please note that there is no Reviewer Two. Reviewer Three's comments were posted twice, which made that individual Reviewer Two and Reviewer Three from my dashboard. I refer to this individual as Reviewer Three throughout the revision memo.

1. Reviewer One requested that I expand on some terms that non-specialist readers may not know. I have cited Bonjour and De Hart using their 2021 piece as asked. On page seven, I discussed the moral line of credit more clearly. Further, I defined "technologies of love" on page six of the manuscript, "bezness" on page seventeen, and "intimate citizenship" on page twenty-six. Reviewer One recommended that I recognize the breadth of literature on family reunification within the introduction. While I found it challenging to work it into the opening, I did acknowledge the vast literature in a detailed footnote. Please see page four for footnote one.

I sincerely appreciate Reviewer One's suggestions on the methods section of the paper, as I see that some of my wording is unclear. Thus, I expanded on my time doing ethnographic observation and why I found Immigration Pathways the ideal choice for my data collection. Further, I reworded 'respondents,' so it does not imply that I spoke with any forum member. I meant the people who responded to the original author of the thread, so this is now corrected. See pages eleven to thirteen for details.

Lastly, I did address the minor issues of citation. I have now put quotation marks around bezness (please see pages sixteen and nineteen). I also made the moral line of credit singular in all instances, except in the title. My rationale for the title is that it refers to every citizen's moral line of credit. In contrast, in the manuscript, I am referring to individual instances where someone is drawing on their moral line of credit. Thank you for keeping me consistent. I also removed several additional spaces and extra punctuation within the paper (see pages one, four, six, seventeen, twenty-five, and twenty-eight. I replaced the & symbol with 'and' (see page seven) and removed the dash on '-undoubtedly skewed' on page twenty-eight. I formalized 'wouldn't' with 'would not' and fixed 'andusing' on page thirty-two. Finally, I correctly cited the missing works in the reference section (i.e., USCIS 2013; Moynihan Report 1965, and Collins 2005, which I meant to be Hill-Collins).

2. Reviewer Three asked for some minor but meaningful revisions. In particular, they asked me to explain and problematize "hegemonic family norms." I expanded on this definition on page eight. I also included that this is a normative understanding of family to emphasize its problematic nature. On page twelve in the Methods section, I briefly explained how the closed coding would reveal how forum members constructed their understandings of family. I chose not to emphasize that these were simply normative iterations of the family because I did look for ways that members pushed back on hegemonic family norms. I felt that saying I looked only for their normative understandings of the family would be equivalent to selecting on the bias. Reviewer Three also requested that the article's title and research question focus specifically on the MENA region and Sub-Saharan Africa. I appreciate this insight and gave it a great deal of thought. However, ultimately, I decided to keep the title and research question the same. I felt that focusing the inquiry on the two specific regions might be limiting. My rationale is that I want to invite future research to examine how citizens' moral lines of credit operate in other regional spaces and/or across different states' immigration systems.

3. Reviewer Four made multiple minor revision requests, which I have satisfied. I referenced the statement "the state is interested in upholding its racial projects" on page three. On page four, I revised the conversation about "irrevocable rights" so that it makes more sense to the reader, and I edited the discussion about "moral gatekeepers" (Wray 2006) so the state does not appear to be a single entity with one, coherent objective. Next, I added a brief description of the citizens' moral currency under the discussion of the political 'economy' on page five. I rephrased for nuance and clarity the discussion on page six regarding citizens' marriage to non-citizens and its interference with state interests. I especially appreciated the request to discuss 'deservingness' in more detail and the literature suggestions. I have done this using some of those readings. Please see page five for this change. Throughout the discussion of the U.S. racial project and its hierarchy on pages five through eleven, I added key historical moments and legislation to contextualize this discussion. I agree with the reviewer that paralleling Arab Americans drawing on social relationships to counteract the 9/11 discourse is too bold a statement. Thus, I revised the language to ease the direct correlation. However, I did not remove this section entirely as I felt that the modified portion is an accurate reflection. Lastly, on page fifteen, I removed the Hill Collins 2005 and Macklin 2022 statement about white women promulgating racial purity through their children and interracial relationships running counter to the state's interests.

I hope that these changes have satisfied the reviewers' requests. Again, thank you for your time and careful attention to this matter. If you have further suggestions or questions about the manuscript, please do not hesitate to contact me via the editor-in-charge.

REVISION MEMO

MORAL LINES OF CREDIT: FORGING RACE PROJECTS, CITIZENSHIP, AND NATION ON ONLINE U.S. SPOUSAL REUNIFICATION FORUMS

I thank the reviewers and the editor-in-charge for the thoughtful feedback and commentary on this manuscript. I have seriously considered and implemented your comments and feedback. They significantly improved the paper. Below, I detail how I addressed the suggestions. Please note that there is no Reviewer Two. Reviewer Three's comments were posted twice, which made that individual Reviewer Two and Reviewer Three from my dashboard. I refer to this individual as Reviewer Three throughout the revision memo.

1. Reviewer One requested that I expand on some terms that non-specialist readers may not know. I have cited Bonjour and De Hart using their 2021 piece as asked. On page seven, I discussed the moral line of credit more clearly. Further, I defined "technologies of love" on page six of the manuscript, "bezness" on page seventeen, and "intimate citizenship" on page twenty-six. Reviewer One recommended that I recognize the breadth of literature on family reunification within the introduction. While I found it challenging to work it into the opening, I did acknowledge the vast literature in a detailed footnote. Please see page four for footnote one.

I sincerely appreciate Reviewer One's suggestions on the methods section of the paper, as I see that some of my wording is unclear. Thus, I expanded on my time doing ethnographic observation and why I found Immigration Pathways the ideal choice for my data collection. Further, I reworded 'respondents,' so it does not imply that I spoke with any forum member. I meant the people who responded to the original author of the thread, so this is now corrected. See pages eleven to thirteen for details.

Lastly, I did address the minor issues of citation. I have now put quotation marks around bezness (please see pages sixteen and nineteen). I also made the moral line of credit singular in all instances, except in the title. My rationale for the title is that it refers to every citizen's moral line of credit. In contrast, in the manuscript, I am referring to individual instances where someone is drawing on their moral line of credit. Thank you for keeping me consistent. I also removed several additional spaces and extra punctuation within the paper (see pages one, four, six, seventeen, twenty-five, and twenty-eight. I replaced the & symbol with 'and' (see page seven) and removed the dash on '-undoubtedly skewed' on page twenty-eight. I formalized 'wouldn't' with 'would not' and fixed 'andusing' on page thirty-two. Finally, I correctly cited the missing works in the reference section (i.e., USCIS 2013; Moynihan Report 1965, and Collins 2005, which I meant to be Hill-Collins).

2. Reviewer Three asked for some minor but meaningful revisions. In particular, they asked me to explain and problematize "hegemonic family norms." I expanded on this definition on page eight. I also included that this is a normative understanding of family to emphasize its problematic nature. On page twelve in the Methods section, I briefly explained how the closed coding would reveal how forum members constructed their understandings of family. I chose not to emphasize that these were simply normative iterations of the family because I did look for ways that members pushed back on hegemonic family norms. I felt that saying I looked only for their normative understandings of the family would be equivalent to selecting on the bias. Reviewer Three also requested that the article's title and research question focus specifically on the MENA region and Sub-Saharan Africa. I appreciate this insight and gave it a great deal of thought. However, ultimately, I decided to keep the title and research question the same. I felt that focusing the inquiry on the two specific regions might be limiting. My rationale is that I want to invite future research to examine how citizens' moral lines of credit operate in other regional spaces and/or across different states' immigration systems.

3. Reviewer Four made multiple minor revision requests, which I have satisfied. I referenced the statement "the state is interested in upholding its racial projects" on page three. On page four, I revised the conversation about "irrevocable rights" so that it makes more sense to the reader, and I edited the discussion about "moral gatekeepers" (Wray 2006) so the state does not appear to be a single entity with one, coherent objective. Next, I added a brief description of the citizens' moral currency under the discussion of the political 'economy' on page five. I rephrased for nuance and clarity the discussion on page six regarding citizens' marriage to non-citizens and its interference with state interests. I especially appreciated the request to discuss 'deservingness' in more detail and the literature suggestions. I have done this using some of those readings. Please see page five for this change. Throughout the discussion of the U.S. racial project and its hierarchy on pages five through eleven, I added key historical moments and legislation to contextualize this discussion. I agree with the reviewer that paralleling Arab Americans drawing on social relationships to counteract the 9/11 discourse is too bold a statement. Thus, I revised the language to ease the direct correlation. However, I did not remove this section entirely as I felt that the modified portion is an accurate reflection. Lastly, on page fifteen, I removed the Hill Collins 2005 and Macklin 2022 statement about white women promulgating racial purity through their children and interracial relationships running counter to the state's interests.

I hope that these changes have satisfied the reviewers' requests. Again, thank you for your time and careful attention to this matter. If you have further suggestions or questions about the manuscript, please do not hesitate to contact me via the editor-in-charge.