As European democracies undergo dramatic demographic shifts, they look to civics education to create social cohesion and produce a "democratic" citizenry. Such a project, however, is not without its tensions and contradictions. Drawing on findings from a yearlong ethnography in a secondary school in Spain, this article traces a number of dilemmas associated with the forming of citizenship identities in a citizenship education class. The analysis highlights how through text/talk the "normative citizen" and notions of "il/legality" were produced in ways that were consequential for immigrant youth's sense of belonging. It further examines how citizenship education, operated as an inherently disciplinary space where immigrant youth were governed as particular kinds of subjects. Drawing upon Foucault's formulations of biopower, it sheds light on the seemingly benign social mechanisms operating within classrooms and schools that are productive of hierarchies of personhood--bounded distinctions between aliens (suspect, un-belonging, abject) and citizens (normative, belonging, deserving)--that ultimately align with and further the nation-state's disciplinary power. Locating the project of educating immigrant youth within a larger field of power disrupts the presumed innocence of civics education and offers up critical openings for rethinking the nature and goals of civics education in democratic societies.