Immigration,national identity and political trust in European democracies

This article argues that discrepancies between individual-level conceptualisations of national identity and official government approaches to national identity, as reflected in policies towards migrants, contribute to reduced levels of political trust in Europe. Public opinion data matched with contextual data measuring immigrant incorporation policies are used to investigate this proposition. The findings indicate that individuals who take a more exclusive approach to national identity but live in political systems that are comparatively more welcoming of immigrant incorporation into the national political system tend to be the least trusting of their political systems, and this is closely followed by those individuals who adopt a more inclusive form of identity but live in countries that are relatively less welcoming in their treatment of immigrants. Where individual identity and immigrant incorporation are both inclusive, trust tends to be relatively high.     

To see ourselves as others see us: identity and attitudes towards immigration amongst civic nationalists

ABSTRACT

This article examines how different conceptions of national identity can be linked to attitudes towards cultural pluralism. The tensions between more culturally pluralistic societies and sustained support for nationalism represent an important political issue in modern western European politics. Such tensions are of particular relevance for stateless nationalist and regionalist parties (SNRPs) for whom national/regional identity is a major political driver. This article empirically tests the relationship between different conceptions of national identity and attitudes towards cultural pluralism in two SNRPs—the Scottish National Party and the Frisian National Party. The article draws upon evidence from two unique full party membership studies and is supported with evidence from documentary analysis. A key finding is that the manner in which members conceptualise national identity has significant implications for their attitudes towards cultural pluralism, which has the potential of becoming a source of tension within SNRPs. A key implication of the article is that there is evidence that attitudes of general members and officially stated party positions and narratives diverge on issues relating to cultural pluralism and national identity. These tensions could potentially be harmful for the party's overall civic image.     

‘The Machine that Creates Slovenians’: The Role of Slovenian Public Broadcasting in Re-affirming and Re-inventing the Slovenian National Identity

This article illustrates how Slovenian national public television came to serve as a central site of contention where fundamental issues of identity, politics and national culture were challenged, negotiated and defined. The Slovenian case offers an interesting laboratory for an analysis of the role of journalism in creating and asserting a particular version of national identity. This article explores how Slovenian television's elites (journalists, editors and officials) articulate the importance of public television as the ‘machine that creates Slovenians’. Based on an analysis of roughly twelve interviews with journalists of Slovenian national television, I argue that one of the most important cultural and political institutions in the creation, maintenance and reinforcement of Slovenian national identity was, and continues to be, national public television.     

An analysis of Jordan's 2013 policy regarding Iraqi refugees

The Iraqi refugee population in Jordan has become a sustained humanitarian emergency, and Jordan must take new action to respond. The inability of Jordan to address the needs of Iraqi refugees causes not only the suffering of those refugees, but also that of the larger native populations, as needy Iraqis depend upon Jordan's already strained resources. In addition, non-governmental organizations cannot keep up with Iraqi refugee needs due to funding restrictions. Moreover, the UNHCR and other aid agencies may not be suited to performing the task of addressing the Iraqi refugee crisis as a majority of this response relates to humanitarian aid, not addressing the political roots of the problem. There are also fundamental statistical issues relating to Iraqi refugees in Jordan. Numerical discrepancies and political connections make it difficult to determine whether the currently purported number of 450,000 Iraqi refugees in Jordan is accurate. The clear benefits Jordan receives from aid might give rise to suspicions of inflated reported numbers of Iraqi refugees. Also, reports make contrary claims about the average social level of Iraqi refugees, making it difficult to determine what type of aid is needed. Jordan should alter internal policy regarding Iraqi refugees to initiate a political solution for the crisis. It must also carry out up-to-date surveys of the numbers and needs of Iraqi refugees to address the significant gaps in current data, and additionally should push for increased social integration of Iraqis within society.     

Rhetorical Theory and the Critique of National Identity Construction

A striking feature of scholarship on national identity is the relative absence of rhetorical theory, or theory related to the persuasive dimensions of discourse, especially given the fact that rhetorical theorists have been concerned with the manufacturing of public opinion and collective identity for over two millennia. To address this absence, this article discusses how rhetorical theories dealing with narrative theory, the social construction of publics, rhetorical constraints, ideology critique, public memory, political history and post-national identity help both to illuminate and critique emergent patterns of national identification.     

The ‘Habsburg Dilemma’ Today: Competing Discourses of National Identity in Contemporary Austria

This article analyses discourses of Austrian national identity. It discusses the reproduction (and contestation) of national identities on the levels of everyday language, political debate and policy. Three discursive formations of the nation—and their histories—are discussed: a nowadays marginal and de-legitimated discourse of pan-Germanic ethnicism; the hegemonic paradigm of ‘Austrian-ness’, which itself comprises a range of ideological positions and constitutes the over-arching framework to most (relevant) debates; and counter-hegemonic discourses including European- and ‘post-national’ identity formations. The article also discusses individuals’ ongoing negotiation of, and possible resistance to, discourses of national belonging, and concludes by relating its findings to the contemporary salience of national identities as a reaction to the (perceived) consequences of economic globalisation.     

Changing Identities: A Case Study of Western Muslim Converts Whose Conversion Revised Their Relationship to Their National Identity

Few studies explore the impact conversion to Islam has on a Western individual’s social identity configuration. This article focuses on six Western Muslim converts—three from Montreal, two from Berlin, and one from Copenhagen—who experienced difficulties relating to their national identities prior to conversion, exploring how it developed afterwards. A qualitative interview guide was adapted in a semi-structured format to the demands of each individual, and interviews were analyzed applying thematic content analysis. The participants reveal how they revised their social identity configuration upon conversion, ultimately reversing their antagonistic relationship to their national identity. Their narratives relate how political realities are embedded in the perception and development of the Western Muslim identity, necessitating a revaluation of their national identity as a form of social critique. Our results demonstrate how socio-political experiences of discrimination and race are all significantly implicated in the process of conversion and Muslim identity development.     

Changing Representations of National Identity and Political Legitimacy: Independence Day Celebrations in Israel, 1952–1998

The construction of meaning and the invention of tradition always take place within a social and political context. Hence, the apolitical purpose of memory and the apolitical utility of national identity, in a broad sense, are linked to power; to the myriad and diverse efforts to maintain, stabilise and perpetuate that power. Focusing on official acts of commemoration, this article explores how political legitimacy—the primary basis for stabilising power—is reflected in and constructed by the constitution of national identity that is linked, in turn, to the definition of collective memory. To this end, the author examines the link between the official articulations of political legitimacy and the official constructions of the nation in Israel, and how these have changed over time. This is accomplished by providing a systematic reading of the texts constituted by the main Independence Day celebration in Israel—in particular, the ceremony known as the ‘Lighting of the Torches’—during the first fifty years of Israeli sovereignty (1952–1998).     

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.     

从族群认同走向民族认同——20世纪中后期广西的民族识别研究之三

本文认为,族群是偏重于文化特征的概念,民族是偏重于政治的概念。广西历史上就已经形成了12个各自具有共同历史来源、文化上各具特点并内部认同的族群,经过民族识别,这些族群被确定为民族,使他们从族群认同走向民族认同。但是,这种民族认同是建立在族群认同的基础之上的。     

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.     

全球化与地方性:认同的全球化话语——基于同仁县"五屯"地区人类学田野调查的个案分析

本文以人类学视野借助田野个案来侧重考察广义的"全球化"对民族国家的影响,尤其是政治全球化、文化全球化和经济全球化对相关的一些身份认同,诸如族群/民族身份认同、国家认同和国民身份建构以及公民认同等的影响。     

Japan.com

Contemporary Japan is in the midst of an identity crisis grounded in conditions of economic, political and social confusion and a lost sense of national direction and purpose. This paper explores the bases of Japan's evolving national political identity. It notes the construction of a sense of Japanese homogeneity and the role of official discourses in the formation of Japan's national identity. The paper argues that internationalisation, cybernetic contacts and community insecurities are undermining the received idea of what it means to be Japanese and posing fundamental challenges to the legitimacy of the contemporary Japanese state.     

Icon-ising national identity: France and India in comparative perspective

The article embeds the arguments of cultural theory and art history in a political science framework, in order to explain the construction of national identities. In comparing the French national allegory Marianne and her Indian counterpart Bharat Mata, the authors set out to trace the conceptual development of the icons, the psycho-history underlying their ongoing formative processes and their strategic function as signifiers that reinforce national identity. The conceptual prism of icon-ising, as one learns from this comparative analysis is what makes the study of processes of cultural negotiation, and an exploration of their impact on identity-formation possible.     

Engineering confederalism for Iraq

This article examines Iraqi political developments in the last few years. It argues that unless a constitutional mechanism for proper dispersal of political powers across Iraq's regions and branches of its government is developed quickly, it may become too late for defeating Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, stemming the sectarian and ethnic conflicts, overcoming its perpetual crises of governance or for keeping Iraq united. We suggest that a confederal structure is a better and lasting political solution for Iraq than federal or other structural configurations. We also argue that power-sharing and consensus must be intertwined directly into the constitutional fabric of the political structure.     

Citizens of Nowhere in Particular: Cosmopolitanism,Writing, and Political Engagement in Eighteenth-Century Europe

This article explores the connection in the late eighteenth century between the invention of citizenship and the obfuscation of local, corporate or national identity under the guise of cosmopolitanism. The common premise in much recent writing on nationalism is that the nation, even if it is an 'imagined' community, provided the critical framework in which political identity and, hence, political participation first became possible for ordinary people. However, it is clear that in absolutist Europe, private subjects were often best able to make themselves into political actors on either the national or the continental stage by de-situating themselves rhetorically, that is, claiming to speak from no place, no position, and no name except 'friend of humanity' or 'citizen of the world'. Moreover, this literary strategy of insisting on one's fungible individuality—the notion that one was no more than a generic 'simple citizen' and no less than 'the plenipotentate of my own ideas' in a culture obsessed with social position and family name—ultimately helped to bolster an alternative (and often historically overlooked) way of thinking about relations among states and the individuals within them that marked an early challenge to the hegemony of national interest.     

边界与国民:现代国家边疆建设中的双重型构

近现代以来欧洲民族国家模式在世界范围的拓展,带来了国家主权边界的清晰化,以及政治制度、经济发展、公共事业等国家力量在边境两侧的差异化实践。中越边境峒中镇段的经验表明,伴随有效的国家边疆建设介入边界地区,边民的国家意识逐渐被清晰化的边界和差异化的国家力量所形塑,边民在适应清晰化边界的过程中,国民身份与认同逐渐超越边民身份与认同。由此,现代民族国家完成从物理边界到国民身份的双重型构。     

Rhetorics of the State: The Public Negotiation of Political Character in Germany,Russia, and Quebec

National identity construction is a fundamentally rhetorical phenomenon maintained and transformed through public discourse. Through the analysis of dramatically rejected state speeches related to national identity and public responses to them, critics can compare competing articulations of national identity against the chronological historical record to identify various instances of strategic memory. By isolating dominant strategies of remembrance, the political character of emergent national identities can be outlined. In this essay, I explicate a critical rhetorical approach to controversial speech called limit work, providing examples of the public negotiation of national identity in 1988 West Germany, 1993 Russia, and 1995 Quebec that illustrate its utility.