"More Basque than You!": Class,Youth, and Identity in an Industrial Basque Town

In this article, I argue that those of us who study nationalism need to "think class as we think the nation," and I suggest a framework for exploring the relationship between class and national identities and projects. I present the case of Basque nationalism and examine how different visions of the nation either include or exclude non-Basque, working-class immigrants. I show how during the economic crisis of the 1980s to early 1990s, young people created a novel Basque identity in the bars associated with the radical-Basque-nationalist movement. This identity combines leftist and nationalist politics with the styles of punk rock, a genre that flourished in the declining centers of industrial capitalism throughout Europe and the United States. Unlike competing versions of Basqueness, radical Basque identity is not ethnically exclusive. Thus it invites youths who are not ethnically Basque to become Basque by drawing on their oppositional politics and working-class backgrounds as alternative sources of "authenticity."