The Identity Construction of Nationally Mixed People: The Impact of Parental Transmission and Socialization Outside the Family

By Anne Unterreiner

Volume 17, Issue 1, pages 25-43

Abstract

A nationally mixed person, defined as an individual whose parents were born in different countries, may have plural socialization and identify with different nations. Studying this population allows us thus to investigate the process of national identification. From ninety-seven qualitative interviews of mixed people living in France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, we learn that parental transmission and socialization outside the family interact in the production of the national identification of mixed people. The intermingling of these dimensions leads the national identity of mixed people to turn towards four identity poles: a rooted identity, a mixed identity based on heritage, a foreigner identity, or an identity other than national. Analysing national self-identification through identity poles has important theoretical implications. First, it shows that national belonging is characterized by fluidity and plurality throughout the entire life course of the respondents. Second, the definition of these different poles of identification highlights the determinants of national self-identification.

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Reconfigurations in the Discourse of Nationalism and National Identity: Turkey at the Turn of the Twenty-first Century

By Tuba Kanci

Volume 9, Issue 3, pages 359-376

Abstract

Throughout recent decades, the processes of globalisation and Europeanisation have been influential in Turkey, bringing various changes to the economic, cultural and political spheres. Within the context of these processes, this article analyses the changes and continuities in the discourse of nationalism and national identity in Turkey through their reflections on school textbooks and curricula. On the one hand, the globalisation process has brought calls for democratisation, as well as citizenship and identity claims, from the societal actors in Turkey. On the other hand, it has given rise to concerns about preserving the status quo, which have then been channelled into the language of nationalism. The Europeanisation process has also fed these projects and discourses. Its effects, in moments of close interrelations between Turkey and the European Union, have consisted of bringing positive reinforcements for the decoupling of security concerns and nationalism, the formation of a new and democratic understanding of citizenship and the realisation of ambitions for democratisation in Turkey; however, in other times, backlashes have occurred.

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Elite Strategies in a Global World: A Typology of Polish Patriots

By Joanna Kaftan

Volume 11, Issue 2, pages 194-213

Abstract

This study focuses on how Polish elites view the relationship between Polish identity and Poland’s place in the world. Samples of priests, politicians, and intellectuals were interviewed in 1999 and 2009. A typology of four ideal types is proposed: ideological nationals, pragmatic nationals, pragmatic transnationals, and ideological transnationals. This typology can be viewed as a continuum of elite emphasis ranging between national and transnational themes. This continuum of emphasis can be seen when examining elite responses to questions concerning NATO membership, EU membership, Polish identity, and Polish democracy. This study finds that while the majority of Polish priests and politicians wished to emphasise national over transnational themes, intellectuals stressed transnational themes. Nevertheless, most acknowledged the inseparable nature of these themes when they talked about the contemporary Polish nation.

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Gender and Nationalism in Latin America: Thoughts on Recent Trends

By Sarah A. Radcliffe and Megan Rivers-Moore

Volume 9, Issue 1, pages 139-145

Abstract

Relations between gender and nationalism are forged in the intersection between race, inter-national relations, sexuality, and class in Latin America; the region’s gendered nationalisms reflecting specific histories and configurations of race, gender relations and projects of nationalism. The gendered nature of nations and nationalism in Latin America remains a vibrant research field (for reviews on gender, see Dore and Molyneuz 2000; on nationalism, Miller 2006). For this reason, our piece can highlight only a few dimensions of a multifaceted dynamic set of processes, reflecting our research interests rather than a comprehensive review.

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Comparing Antisemitism, Islamophobia, and Asylophobia: The British Case

By Thomas Linehan

Volume 12, Issue 2, pages 366-386

Abstract

This article examines how far discourses on the ‘Other’ and immigration in contemporary Britain resemble antisemitic discourses in Britain during and between the two World Wars. The article contends that there was a particular British species of antisemitism in evidence during the wartime and interwar periods which was made up of a number of key elements, defined here as ‘conspiratorial’, ‘cultural’, ‘religious’, and ‘economic’ forms of anti-Jewish animosity. The article then considers whether similar elements can be discerned in responses to ‘Other’ maligned groups in the contemporary period, particularly in relation to anti-Muslim sentiment or Islamophobic discourses. The article then investigates whether we can identify symmetry in relation to another group which has experienced high levels of discrimination in twenty-first-century Britain, asylum seekers. Here, the article considers whether one needs to situate contemporary ‘asylophobia’ in a wider explanatory framework which both takes account of the possible ‘re-cycling’ of earlier stigmatising representations of Jews, and more contemporary influences and developments relating to neo-liberal globalisation.

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