Separating nationality and citizenship
We often talk about moving on from the nation-state, but in practice what steps would that involve? One would naturally be to separate the ideas of nationality and citizenship.
This will sound strange to many, yet this merely indicates how much effort the nationalists have gone to in ordering our lives and our directing our education systems. The reality is that this combination of nationality and citizenship is a relatively recent phenomenon and one that was artificially constructed, not a natural state of affairs.
The fact we view the two concepts as coming together is a product of the nation-state; the idea that one state should encompass one nation and that the borders of the nation and the state are one and the same. This sounds uncontroversial because in many cases we have been told this is normal and it is the reality we see around us.
But what if we applied this same principle to factors other than nationality? One state for one race? One state for one religion? We instinctively baulk at such ideas and would immediately express concern about any group that tries to establish such a regime. These are seen as exclusive, divisive, dangerous and wrong.
If we are to actually fight nationalism and progress, we need to think outside the nationalist box that has been imposed on us. Formally acknowledging that citizenship and nationality are not the same is one step towards this.
While citizenship expresses a set of civic rights and responsibilities for the state in which we live, nationality is a belonging to a group of people (most often the area we were born). The first is a legal status, the second an expression of identity. Citizenship is normally binary, you have it or you do not. Nationality, on the other hand, is on a spectrum - different people feel it at different levels of intensity.
Just as are happy to accept that multi-racial, multi-religious, multi-cultural states are more inclusive, we should all be looking to establish multi-national states. Most of society has no problem sharing citizenship with people of other religious beliefs (or none), people with a different colour of skin. Currently, some states allow dual-nationality, but the idea is still that citizenship requires nationality. Other states do not even allow this, they insist that all citizens must also become nationals, they are rooted in nationalist ideology on the purity of the state as a single nation.
In the 21st Century, if we want to break away from the destructive nationalism of the 20th Century, the ideology that cost so many lives, we need to be bold and declare as a matter of constitutional principle that our state is multi-national and that citizenship is open to all who believe in our values, with no arm-twisting or bribery on nationality and identity.
This will sound strange to many, yet this merely indicates how much effort the nationalists have gone to in ordering our lives and our directing our education systems. The reality is that this combination of nationality and citizenship is a relatively recent phenomenon and one that was artificially constructed, not a natural state of affairs.
The fact we view the two concepts as coming together is a product of the nation-state; the idea that one state should encompass one nation and that the borders of the nation and the state are one and the same. This sounds uncontroversial because in many cases we have been told this is normal and it is the reality we see around us.
But what if we applied this same principle to factors other than nationality? One state for one race? One state for one religion? We instinctively baulk at such ideas and would immediately express concern about any group that tries to establish such a regime. These are seen as exclusive, divisive, dangerous and wrong.
If we are to actually fight nationalism and progress, we need to think outside the nationalist box that has been imposed on us. Formally acknowledging that citizenship and nationality are not the same is one step towards this.
While citizenship expresses a set of civic rights and responsibilities for the state in which we live, nationality is a belonging to a group of people (most often the area we were born). The first is a legal status, the second an expression of identity. Citizenship is normally binary, you have it or you do not. Nationality, on the other hand, is on a spectrum - different people feel it at different levels of intensity.
Just as are happy to accept that multi-racial, multi-religious, multi-cultural states are more inclusive, we should all be looking to establish multi-national states. Most of society has no problem sharing citizenship with people of other religious beliefs (or none), people with a different colour of skin. Currently, some states allow dual-nationality, but the idea is still that citizenship requires nationality. Other states do not even allow this, they insist that all citizens must also become nationals, they are rooted in nationalist ideology on the purity of the state as a single nation.
In the 21st Century, if we want to break away from the destructive nationalism of the 20th Century, the ideology that cost so many lives, we need to be bold and declare as a matter of constitutional principle that our state is multi-national and that citizenship is open to all who believe in our values, with no arm-twisting or bribery on nationality and identity.
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