International migration and the rise of the ‘civil’ nation

Scholars largely agree that immigration policies in Western Europe have switched to a liberal, civic model. Labelled as ‘civic turn’, ‘civic integration’ or ‘liberal convergence’, this model is not identically applied across countries, since national institutions, traditions and identifications still matter. Even so, the main focus is on processes which allow or prevent migrants to be incorporated into nations usually taken for granted in their meanings. Moving from policies to discourses, this article aims to interrogate what kind of nation is behind these policies as a way to further scrutinise the ‘civic turn’. Exploring how the term ‘civility’ and its adjectivisations are discursively deployed in Italian parliamentary debates on immigration and integration issues, the article points to two opposite narratives of nation. While one mobilises civility in order to rewrite the nation in terms of a common, inclusive, civic ‘we’, the other uses civility to reaffirm the conflation between national identity and the identity of the ethno-cultural majority. These findings suggest the importance of exploring the ‘civic turn’ not only across countries, but also across political parties within the same country to capture the ways in which a liberal, civic convergence in political discourses might hide divergent national boundary mechanisms.     

Globalization and migration in the contemporary world order: an insight into the postnational condition and the diasporas

In the new millennium, nations and nationalism persevere despite scholarship that has both anticipated and declared their demise. Globalization, which brings flow of capital, goods, ideas, people and technology, has a tremendous undeniable impact on every sphere of the contemporary world. The growing connectivity amongst the nation-states at physical, imaginative and virtual levels facilitates transnational networks that produce new types of migrants who do not respect national borders. The diaspora communities today are no longer confined in the homeland/hostland binary. The globalized economy, technology and the world society provide enough space for those with hyphenated identities to survive as a connecting link not only with the homeland but also with other diasporic nodes with common origin and cultural/ethnic background. Thus, a new diaspora is taking shape which is highly mobile and interconnected. Viewed in this perspective, this paper aims to explore the changing configurations of diasporic identities in the context of a much eulogized postnational condition engendered by increasing transnational activities that defy the stringent idea of nation and its state’s territorial boundaries questioning the very viability of nation-states in the present era of globalization.     

For kick and country: the 2010 VIVA World Cup and sport as a site for expressions of alternate ‘national’ identities

The VIVA World Cup is an alternative football tournament for groups unrepresented in international sport, including groups that identify along political, geographic, ethnic, and linguistic lines. This study of the 2010 edition, held in Gozo, Malta, examines the organizers' insistence that their event is political and the ways in which the ‘national’ interests of participating groups challenged this position. While the VIVA World Cup could offer participants a site for resistance, the footballers in Gozo asserted cultural distinctiveness and celebrated affective attachments not to protest the exclusivity of world sport, but so that they could join in too.     

Reconciling transnational mobility and national social security: what say the welfare state bureaucrats?

The welfare state was constructed to ensure the well-being of a sedentary population, consisting of citizens living within the territorial boundaries of the nation. However, mobility patterns change, and more people lead lives that criss-cross national borders while drawing on different sources of transnational social protection – the welfare state included. Now, the daily work of bureaucrats involves delivering national social security benefits to transnationally mobile recipients. Through encounters and casework processes, these welfare state bureaucrats observe how ‘transnationals’ deal with complex regulations and make use of the social security system. This article explores bureaucrats’ perceptions of individuals’ agency and behaviour as they reconcile their transnational mobility with national social security. It builds on data collected during ethnographic fieldwork in the Norwegian welfare administration, including 36 interviews, participant observation and informal conversations. The analysis identifies an institutional perspective of transnationals’ agency as shaped by their level of regulatory awareness and compliance. The bureaucrats observe some types of transnational behaviour to be more prevalent than others. As the article concludes, these bureaucratic perspectives have major implications for transnational social security delivery and how the welfare state accommodates transnational mobility.     

Designer nations: Neo-liberal nation branding – Brand Estonia

This article critically examines the emergence of nation branding as a commercial practice at the end of the Cold War by conceptualizing it as a means for nations to redefine and reposition themselves within the master narrative of globalization. It examines the industry literature of the nation branding movement, which seeks to legitimate the practice. It argues that nation branding is an engine of neo-liberalism that explicitly embraces a reductive logic, which privileges market relations (market fundamentalism) in articulations of national identity; also contends that nation branding is a risky business that can backfire, since its success depends, in large part, on the intuitive knowledge of individual industry ‘creatives’. It maintains that the methodology of nation branding, qua methodology, is profoundly anti-democratic. It offers recommendations for making nation branding more transparent and accountable to democratic values, but also explores Umberto's concept of ‘semiotic guerrilla warfare’ as a possible strategy for disrupting nation branding and redirecting initiatives to rethink national identity in more democratic directions.     

Northern Ireland 1968–2008. The politics of entrenchment

The aim of this article is to propose and apply a conceptual model to evaluate how national identity, state interests and territory, including both state territory and national homeland, may be interwoven in a particular conflict. The frozen conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh in the south Caucasus, the selected case study, appears to defy resolution efforts based on an assessment of self-determination of nations or on territorial integrity of the state. The article begins with the view that one-dimensional conceptions of ‘state’ and ‘nation’ are insufficient for understanding complex relations underlying territorial conflict. It is suggested that a more comprehensive understanding may be obtained and applied toward conflict resolution through a consideration of multiple scales and dimensions of activity in a particular conflict. The article focuses not only on the roles of states and nations, but also considers the meanings of territory and, most importantly, contributing factors to a sufficient capacity to compromise.     

Friends or foes? Migrants and sub-state nationalists in Europe

ABSTRACT

How do sub-state nationalists respond to the growing presence of cultural diversity in their ‘homelands’ resulting from migration? Sub-state nationalists in Europe, in ‘nations without states’ such as Catalonia and Scotland, have been challenging the traditional nation-state model for many decades. While the arguments in favour of autonomy or independence levelled by these movements have become more complex, sub-state nationalist movements remain grounded by their perceived national community that is distinct from the majority nation. Migration to the ‘homeland’ of a sub-state nation, then, presents a conundrum for sub-state elites that we label the ‘legitimation paradox’: too much internal diversity may undermine the claim to cultural distinctiveness. We engage with three common intervening variables thought to influence how sub-state nationalists confront the ‘legitimation paradox’: civic/ethnic nationalism, degree of political autonomy, and party competition. Our overarching argument is that none of these factors have a unidirectional or determinate effect on the sub-state nationalism-immigration nexus, which is why the nuanced case studies that comprise this Special Issue are worthwhile endeavours.     

How the host nation's boundary drawing affects immigrants’ belonging

Across Western democracies, the place for newcomers in the host society is debated, involving often a questioning of immigrants’ belonging to their new nation. This article argues that immigrants’ feeling of host national belonging depends on how the host nation imagines its community and its concomitant boundaries. Utilising survey and country level data in multilevel regressions, immigrants’ belonging is found to vary significantly across the 19 countries included. A central contribution is the finding that citizenship policies do not explain this cross-national variation. Instead, what matters is the informal boundary drawing produced in the majority population's conception of what is important for being part of the national ‘us'. Thus, immigrants’ belonging is significantly greater when the majority population prioritises attainable criteria of national membership. In addition, these priorities are shown to have deep historical roots as immigrants’ belonging is greater in settler countries and in nations which democratised early. By showing that national imageries have consequences for a country's welcoming capacities, and by showing that these welcoming capacities are historically path dependent, the study contributes to the debate within nationalism studies about national identity's causal significance.     

Connecting cultures: rethinking Rabindranath Tagore’s ‘ideals of education’

In 1917, Rabindranath Tagore declared, ‘There is only one history – the history of man’ [Tagore, R. (1917/2009). Nationalism. New Delhi: Penguin, p. 65]. This concept of ‘one-history’, and by extension ‘one-world’ is at the heart of his conceptualisation of what I call, education-sans-boundaries and, as I see it, one of the ways to bring a glocal unity. His goal was to establish the dignity of human relationships across boundaries. Thus, for him, local education and global education should not be two ends of a spectrum but overlapping categories instead. Moreover, the education-sans-boundaries should help in restoring the balance and harmony between man and society, knowledge and knowledge, and nation and nation. In this paper, I will explore Tagore’s relevant writings on education, with a focus on his concerted educational efforts to negotiate the boundaries of nation and geography to restore the lost rhythm. In the highly fractured times in which he lived, Tagore saw education in India was in a double-layered crisis under colonialism and growing nationalism. His was a non-dogmatic defence of harmony and principles of unity, and he tried to achieve this in his education models by going beyond the realms of collapsing of cultural differences and without sacrificing local/individual ties and that admits to no artificial boundaries – political, ideological or geographic. The present attempt, therefore, engages with Tagore’s distinct conceptualisation of open-ended education models by looking at his scholarly-and-practical efforts. It suggests that transmission of cultures has provided a ‘broad-basis’ of education in India and can offer healthy conditions for, and directions towards, building transnational/international solidarities.     

Having a soul or choosing a face? Nation branding,identity and cosmopolitan imagination

If nation branding is about constructing and promoting national identity, what kind of ‘identity’ could it possibly be? This article analyses how the branded nation qualitatively differs from earlier forms of imagined communities by focusing on the tension between inward- and outward-directed dimensions of nation branding. A particular focus is placed on the concept of ‘identity’, which, it is argued, is insufficiently problematized in previous research. The discussion takes its departure in a case study of Ukraine, where all nation branding attempts came to an abrupt halt when political unrest broke out in late 2013. The political unrest led to a rapid shift in forms of concern over Ukraine, since nation branding can only be conducted in times of relative social harmony. The case further illustrates the argument that collective identity is not a main issue when branding a nation, and it is argued that a perspective of cosmopolitanism can bring new insights to the phenomenon.     

Review article

Social processes in the world today are characterized by the growing importance of relations between actors located in different national spaces (transnational relations). Based on case studies, this article illustrates how nowadays transnational relations between local and transnational actors affect in different ways the social production of representations that are sociopolitically significant – insofar as they articulate meanings in the constitution and practices of social organizations and movements of diverse political orientations. Through the analysis of cases related to the social production of representations of ideas of pan-ethnic indigenous identities, ‘culture and development’, ‘civil society’, and ‘free trade’, this text seeks to contribute to the theoretical debate about culture, communication, and social change in the contemporary world. The cases discussed in this article are based on field and documentary research undertaken in Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Mexico, the United States, and Venezuela.     

Deconstruction of National Identity in the Third Reich: Nazisprache und Geopolitik

Under the Third Reich, concepts of Geopolitik and Lebensraum were redefined. The Nazi Party developed Nazisprache, a coded, convoluted vocabulary used to describe, delimit and eventually destroy undesirable populations (primarily Jews, Gypsies, mentally ill, disabled, etc.). By corrupting conventional German meaning, Nazi officials legally extended borders of Nazi-controlled territories while successfully suppressing knowledge of their cruelty. As Nazi communications grew more circumspect, ‘euphemism’ increased; national and personal boundaries were linguistically renamed and politically re-conceptualised, potentiating the thorough dissolution of nation, person and ethnic entity.

‘A yielding to the form prepares for assent to the matter identified with it.’ (Kenneth Burke)     

Diaspora as aesthetic formation: community sports events and the making of a Somali diaspora

This paper uses the concept of aesthetic formation to examine the practices through which diasporic imaginations become tangible and experienced as ‘real’. The authors interpret sport as an embodied aesthetic practice through which diasporas materialise, with important implications for identification and belonging. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork on a transnational community-based sports event, the Amsterdam Futsal Tournament, the paper discusses how articulations of Somali diasporism become tangible and embodied in subjects who participate in this event. The authors conclude that these materialisation practices can simultaneously elicit multiple forms and levels of belonging that also foster a sense of integration and belonging to the nation.     

Navigating the city: internal migration of Oaxacan indigenous women

The relationship between migration and gender roles has received increased attention in recent decades but most of the literature has focused on transnational migration while the relationships between transnational and internal migration, and gender roles and internal migration have not been widely studied. In this paper, I analyse internal migration as a ‘transborder experience’. I argue that indigenous women from Zegache who engage in internal migration to Mexico City pose greater challenges to ‘traditional’ gender roles in their community because their experience as single young women navigating Mexico’s capital and their reliance on female social networks allow them to obtain social legitimation by claiming migration experience and courageousness. I contrast migration to Mexico City with transnational migration. Although transnational migration challenges, to some extent, existing gender roles, women from Zegache who migrate transnationally often do so as part of couples and within gendered social networks.     

The peasant matrix for nation building: an effective model? Some reflections on the Belarusian case

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the challenges and difficulties faced in using a peasant model to create a national matrix for Belarus. The sense of belonging to a nation generated by the ‘community of the soil’ [Foucher, M. (2007). L'obsession des frontières [Obsession of the Frontiers]. Paris: Perrin] has a special significance for ‘community of destiny’ [Weber, M. (1995). Économie et société: tome 2 [Economy and Society: vol. 2]. Paris: Plon] for the Belarusian nation in that Belarus is a peasant nation. ‘The peasantry is the most authentic expression of the relationship between a nation and its land; peasant customs become ethnic symbols and referents’ [Thiesse, A.-M. (1999). La création des identités nationales: Europe XVIII^e–XX^e siècles [The Creation of National Identities. Europe XVIII^th–XX^th centuries]. Paris: Seuil, 159]. By studying the origin of the sense of belief in a community, Weber (1995) notes that it may originate from the similarities of the exterior habitus [Bourdieu, P. (1964). Le déracinement [Uprooting]. Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit] adaptation to external conditions, and imitation of a neighboring group. These assumptions are of significant importance for the study of Belarusian identity, an understanding of which cannot be reached without taking into account the fundamental role played by the peasantry in the history of Belarus. Historical analysis indeed bears out the importance of the peasant stratum in the Belarusian socio-political and identity structure. Many scholars insist on the fact that identity-building process are inherently territorial Foucher (2007), relating to the ‘soil’ of the nation [Balibar, E. (2005). Europe. Constitution. Frontière [Europe. Constitution. Frontier]. Paris: Editions du Passant], which is particularly important for peasant nations, as Belarusians.     

Transnational heritage migrants in Istanbul: second-generation Turk-American and Turk-German ‘Returnees’ in their parents’ homeland

This paper addresses several less-explored dimensions of current scholarship on globalisation, migration and transnationalism: north–south migration streams, the role of second-generation ‘heritage migrants’ and the importance of social capital within unequal transnational social fields. We compare two circuits of second-generation migrants, Turk-Germans and Turk-Americans, engaged in ‘intensive transnationalism’ having independently moved to reside in their parents’ homeland. Istanbul becomes the site of homeland return for these distinct streams of educated heritage migrants. Cross-national comparison of the children of the more stigmatised Turk-German ‘guest workers’ with the socially less salient Turk-Americans of middle-class backgrounds offers insight into the way class networks and national capital are distinctly leveraged by adult children with immigrant parents of distinct contexts of homeland exit.     

The transnational phase of Chinese organisational development in Australia

This article aims to contextualise the new phase of Chinese organisational development in Australia in the academic tradition of transnationalism, explore the concrete forms of transnational activities undertaken by overseas-oriented Chinese organisations in economic, socio-cultural and political domains and analyse their policy relevance for both China and Australia. It argues that while these transnational activities could be seen as deliberative attempts to cater to the policy imperatives of the People's Republic of China, they also have the potential of furthering the national interest of Australia, which looks to enhance its economic and political standing in Asia. Underlying the triadic interactions of the Chinese transmigrants is the situational representation of ‘Chineseness’ and ‘Westernness’, which allows them to achieve a strategic balance in addressing the policy objectives of Australia and China and accumulate the greatest amount of ethnic capital in the process. Though primarily driven by self-interest and surely not free from controversies and tensions, these new forms of Chinese organisational activism are gradually taken into account by policy-makers of both countries to develop policy responses in multiple areas.     

Regimes of Mobility Across the Globe

Mobility studies emerged from a postmodern moment in which global ‘flows’ of capital, people and objects were increasingly noted and celebrated. Within this new scholarship, categories of migrancy are all seen through the same analytical lens. This article and Regimes of Mobility: Imaginaries and Relationalities of Power, the special issue of JEMS it introduces, build on, as well as critique, past and present studies of mobility. In so doing, this issue challenges conceptual orientations built on binaries of difference that have impeded analyses of the interrelationship between mobility and stasis. These include methodological nationalism, which counterpoises concepts of internal and international movement and native and foreigner, and consequently normalises stasis. Instead, the issue offers a regimes of mobility framework that addresses the relationships between mobility and immobility, localisation and transnational connection, experiences and imaginaries of migration, and rootedness and cosmopolitan openness. The introduction highlights how, within this framework and its emphasis on social fields of differential power, the contributors to this collection ethnographically explore the disparities, inequalities, racialised representations and national mythscapes that facilitate and legitimate differential mobility and fixity. Although the authors examine nation-state building processes, their analysis is not confined by national boundaries.     

‘Settling’ the multicultural nation-state: Little Mosque on the Prairie,and the figure of the ‘moderate Muslim’

This paper analyzes Little Mosque on the Prairie, its characters and themes within the context of post-9/11 discourses of nationalism and citizenship. Against the backdrop of the Canadian national narrative, I argue that the sitcom foregrounds a ‘moderate Muslim’ that demarcates the boundaries of the multicultural nation-state, especially when juxtaposed against the racially and sexually coded Muslim ‘other’ on the global landscape. The moderate Muslim is represented as ‘liberal’ and ‘modern’, one who seeks to integrate her faith into the multicultural fabric of society. Such a figure, represented both as a ‘good’ Muslim/immigrant and a ‘good’ Canadian citizen-subject, illuminates the boundaries of ‘acceptability’ within the Canadian national imaginary. The figure of the moderate Muslim reinforces the racial coding embedded in this imaginary, while enabling the state to proclaim its ‘multicultural tolerance’ and benevolence. Building on previous scholarship on race, citizenship, and nation-building, I argue that the moderate Muslim – as exemplified in Little Mosque on the Prairie – serves important ideological functions in (re)defining the internal (and racially coded) borders of the nation. While Little Mosque on the Prairie makes an important contribution to the representation of Muslims, challenging some stereotypes, I argue that it does not deliver on its considerable potential to articulate nuanced representations of Muslims. Through its foregrounding of the figure of the moderate Muslim, the sitcom reaffirms key norms, engages in a politics of authenticity, and reinforces hegemonic messages, both within Muslim communities and in Canadian society. Thus, the moderate Muslim becomes a key player in enabling the state to render invisible its exclusion of the ‘Muslim Other,' while maintaining its non-racist credentials.     

民族文化的资本化运用

本文从人类学的视角出发 ,通过对民族经济与民族文化涵义的认识及二者关系的辨析 ,指出民族经济与民族文化是嵌合在一起的。民族经济不可能游离于民族文化而独立 ,民族文化又必然要以民族经济为依托。民族发展不仅与民族经济相关联 ,而且也与民族文化、与人本身的完善和发展相关联。因此 ,民族发展是一个整体性的问题。在现代世界体系中 ,处于世界边缘位置的民族是无法再重复中心国家的发展道路的 ,他们所能作的只能是动员更为广泛的社会文化资源 ,充分运用包括经济资本、社会资本和文化资本等多种资本形式来为自身的全面发展提供动力。民族文化的资本化运用的实践活动就是这样的努力行为 ,其意义深远。因为这样的实践不仅为民族的发展提供了多样化的道路 ,而且还为民族文化的弘扬提供了制度化的保证 ,进而也为人类新的文明的产生奠定了坚实的基础