Stability of National-Identity Content: Level,Predictors, and Implications

A neglected topic in empirical research on national identity is its stability at the individual level, and this is especially true for its content, that is, the meaning elements that people associate with the concept of nation. In this article, we study the stability of key dimensions of national-identity content. We ask three simple questions: How stable is national-identity content—as captured in the ethnic/civic framework—at the level of individual citizens? Are there clear differences in stability across subgroups? What are the implications of interindividual differences in stability? Analyzing data from four waves of a large-scale panel survey of German citizens (N = 4,654) collected over a five-year period (2016–21), we show that there is high but not perfect stability of the degree to which individuals subscribe to ethnic and civic criteria of nationhood. Second, we find little difference in stability as a function of several theoretically selected characteristics. Third, we show that the association between national-identity content and relevant political attitudes (immigration attitudes and far-right party support) increases with intraindividual stability. These findings have important implications for our understanding of how national-identity content is shaped and mobilized and how it can influence political attitudes and behaviors.     

“Keep them out to save our inside:” discourses on immigration by the Spanish far right

Vox is a far-right, Spanish political party that has steadily grown to become the third main party in the national congress. Immigration is a major presence in Vox's political agenda. Through Critical Discourse Analysis, we analyze the party's public speeches and Twitter communications on immigration in the last 3 years, from the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 to the Ukraine-Russia war in 2022. These contexts have provided a fertile ground for Vox's concerns with the protection of national borders, the criminalization of African and irregular immigrants, and the Spanish Government's ineffectiveness to protect the Spaniards' homes. Vox's main discursive strategies entail constructions of migrants and migration based on dichotomous binaries, culture clash, exclusionary discourses of domopolitics, and fears of imminent social and cultural changes. These constructions are based on the unproblematized belief on essential and unchangeable values that forge the identity of the homeland, which is implicitly threatened by immigrants. Against the migratory invasion, Vox constitutes itself as the ethical protector of the Spanish society and nation, “out of care for the insiders and not out of hatred for outsiders.”     

Embracing the “Nation”

The idea of the “nation” has played only a small role in modern political philosophy because of its apparent irrationalism and amoralism. David Miller, however, sets out to show that these charges can be overcome: nationality is a rational element of one’s cultural identity, and nations are genuinely ethical communities. In this paper I argue that his project fails. The defence against the charge of irrationalism fails because Miller works within a framework of ethical particularism which leads to a position of metaethical relativism. A consequence of this relativism is that a community’s moral principles and boundaries of exclusion cannot be rationally justified to those constructed as “outsiders”. The defence against the charge of amoralism fails because Miller does not so much provide an argument to show that nations are ethical communities as assume they are; we are therefore left without resources to discriminate between ethical and unethical nations. I apply these problems to Miller’s treatment of the question of immigration, arguing that it shows that his version of “liberal” nationalism has a tendency to collapse towards a conservative position on such issues. This should not give us any great confidence that the nation, as Miller presents it, should be embraced by modern political philosophy. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Constructing who can be Japanese: A study of social markers of acceptance in Japan

Social markers of acceptance are socially constructed indicators of adaptation (e.g., language skills or adherence to social norms) that recipient nationals use in deciding whether to view an immigrant as a host community member. This study had two objectives: (a) to distill the markers considered important by Japanese undergraduates to accept immigrants in Japanese society and (b) to test the premises of integrated threat and social identity theories by ascertaining the effects on marker endorsement of perceived immigrant threat, contribution, relative social status, and intergroup permeability. Native‐born Japanese (the term “native‐born Japanese” is used throughout this article to refer to people born as Japanese citizens—differentiating them from immigrants who are Japanese citizens naturalized after birth) from 12 Japanese universities (N = 428) completed an online survey. Marker importance ratings were factor‐analyzed, and three latent dimensions were found representing sociolinguistic, ethnic, and socioeconomic markers. Multiple hierarchical regressions discerned the main effects of immigrants’ perceived threat and contribution on social markers as well as their interactions with intergroup permeability and immigrant relative status. The results underscored perceived threat’s consistent role in increasing marker importance and suggested divergent paths to acceptance: Immigrants perceived as “low‐status” were expected to conform to sociolinguistic and ethnic markers, whereas socioeconomic markers were stressed more for “high‐status” immigrants when perceived immigrant threat increased and intergroup boundaries were considered less permeable.     

Echoes of the Danish Cartoon Crisis 10 Years Later: Identity,Injury and Intelligibility from Copenhagen to Paris and Texas

ABSTRACT

The tenth anniversary of the Danish cartoon crisis of 2005–06 invites reflection on its historical significance and contemporary relevance. In the Danish context 10 years ago, the events generated substantial debate about issues such as terrorism, immigration, blasphemy and the place of Islam in Denmark and in the Danish folk. Furthermore, they raised complex questions about Danish identity in a society that had become significantly more religiously and culturally diverse in the preceding decades. Most of these questions, however, were eclipsed by the polarized public debate about free speech and religious respect. The year 2015 brought many of these questions back to the fore after the murders that January of 12 journalists at the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo and attacks at a kosher market in Paris, followed in February by shootings at a free speech event in Copenhagen and at a synagogue, and later attacks in May at a Muhammad cartoon contest exhibit in Garland, Texas. Despite their disparate contexts, these violent events have echoes of the original Danish cartoon crisis. This article suggests that the three concepts of identity, injury and intelligibility can together help to add complexity to popular interpretations of the original Danish cartoon crisis and recent related events, and prompt us to think beyond the dualistic categories of free speech and blasphemy.     

Immigration,language proficiency,and autobiographical memories: Lifespan distribution and second-language access

This investigation examined two controversies in the autobiographical literature: how cross-language immigration affects the distribution of autobiographical memories across the lifespan and under what circumstances language-dependent recall is observed. Both Spanish/English bilingual immigrants and English monolingual non-immigrants participated in a cue word study, with the bilingual sample taking part in a within-subject language manipulation. The expected bump in the number of memories from early life was observed for non-immigrants but not immigrants, who reported more memories for events surrounding immigration. Aspects of the methodology addressed possible reasons for past discrepant findings. Language-dependent recall was influenced by second-language proficiency. Results were interpreted as evidence that bilinguals with high second-language proficiency, in contrast to those with lower second-language proficiency, access a single conceptual store through either language. The final multi-level model predicting language-dependent recall, including second-language proficiency, age of immigration, internal language, and cue word language, explained ¾ of the between-person variance and ¹/₅ of the within-person variance. We arrive at two conclusions. First, major life transitions influence the distribution of memories. Second, concept representation across multiple languages follows a developmental model. In addition, the results underscore the importance of considering language experience in research involving memory reports.     

The two Bernard Berenson cousins: The interplay among immigration,culture, and narcissism

The lives of two 19th century cousins, both of whom changed their names to Bernard Berenson, are considered from historical and psychodynamic perspectives, using a psychobiographical method. The Jewish cousins immigrated separately to Boston from Lithuania in 1875 and 1882. One cousin, later calling himself simply B.B., became a world‐renowned art historian. The other Bernard became a misanthrope after feeling deeply humiliated by his cousin's family in Boston. Many biographies were written about the famous B.B. The only histories of his cousin Bernard were family stories, as he was the author's great‐grandfather. The intersecting lives of these cousins are discussed. Both men faced the challenges of immigration as well as intense anti‐Semitism and prejudice in each country in which they lived. These cultural and historical conditions interacted with the cousins’ narcissistic vulnerabilities. Their lives demonstrate different manifestations of narcissistic suffering, with B.B's being more consistent with the construct of a “grandiose narcissist” and Bernard's being more consistent with that of a “closet narcissist.” The life stories of these two cousins with the same name offers an intriguing instance of a complicated relationship among immigration, prejudice, and narcissism and case examples of the manifestation of how narcissistic suffering can influence lives.     

Selecting Talented Migrants: Majority and Minority Perspectives

Many countries seek to specifically attract talented migrants in order to match the needs of national economies. In addition to the well-known intergroup antagonism between natives and immigrants, such immigration policies targeting talented migrants imply differentiation within the immigrant group, using normative criteria to distinguish desirable and economically useful immigrants from undesirable ones. Based on European Social Survey data (Round 7, N = 9856) comprised of national citizens from six multinational countries, we show that national majorities support individualized, “cherry picking” immigration policies to a greater degree than historical national minorities and that this support is associated with national majorities' stronger sense of identification with the country and its individualistic norms. We thereby conceptualize a novel facet of multiculturalism based on individual justice principles that is rarely at the forefront of research on immigration and multiculturalism.     

Mahometans on the Edge of Colonial Empire: Antipodean Experiences

ABSTRACT

The public conceptualization of Muslim immigration and settlement in New Zealand has become synonymous with the comparatively recent influx of Asian and African migrants and refugees over the past two decades. However, a noteworthy minority of Muslim immigrants arrived during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in the colonial period. This article surveys the immigration and settlement of Muslims from the 1850s to the 1950s, focusing on the biographies of the most prominent individuals, broadly tracing their arrival and participation in the Anglo-European Christian society they chose to settle in, through to the creation of the Islamic institutions in this country from the 1950s to 1980s. I will conclude with a brief overview of the significance of this pioneer period in view of more recent immigration and the proliferation of Islam in New Zealand, together with some observations upon the interactions of Muslims with a largely Christian society and what that may indicate for the understanding of relations between Muslims and Christians within New Zealand from the mid-nineteenth century onwards. Although the first century of Muslim settlement has been largely overlooked, or marginalized, much can be revealed about the broader Muslim experience at this extremity of the (former) British Empire.     

Cultural Threat and Anti‐immigrant Prejudice: The Case of Protestants in Northern Ireland

Cultural threat has emerged as a consistent predictor of anti‐immigrant and anti‐minority attitudes across many different national contexts. We examine this issue in the context of Northern Ireland using representative survey data, suggesting that Protestant and unionist communities experience a higher level of cultural threat than Catholic and nationalist communities on account of the ‘parity of esteem’ principle that has informed changes in the province since the Belfast Agreement of 1998. Our analyses confirm that, although there is evidence for some level of anti‐immigrant sentiment across all groups, Protestants and unionists do indeed report relatively more negative attitudes towards a range of immigrant and ethnic target groups compared with Catholics, nationalists or respondents who do not identify with any political category. The analyses further suggest that their higher level of perceived cultural threat partially accounts for this difference. We argue that cultural threat can be interpreted as a response to changes in Northern Ireland that have challenged the dominant status enjoyed by Protestants and unionists in the past. More generally, we argue that a politicised characterisation of cultural threat needs to be elaborated through future work. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.