Civic Nationalism, Civic Nations and the Problem of Migration

It is often argued that there is a clear distinction between two fundamentally different and opposed kinds of nationalism: one civic, the other ethnic; the one open and inclusionary, the other closed and exclusionary. 1 This distinction is, however, problematic in a number of respects, particularly when we come to consider the regulation of migration, where nation states which are often seen to be essentially civic in character have worked within a largely nationalist frame of reference with particular conceptions of national identity, which may be as exclusionary in their own way as those of supposedly ‘ethnic’ nation states. The origins of this are conceptually problematic, whilst ‘civic’ nation states do not consistently abide by their own putatively democratic and inclusionary norms. It has been argued by some (Soysal 1994) that the tensions this has produced, and the contradictions which may have been exposed, may be and indeed are being resolved by the emergence of a new form of transnational citizenship, particularly in Western Europe, but this may be to underestimate the continuing grip of nationalism, not only in its ethnic but also in its civic form. All forms of nationalism, however they differ, it can be argued, partake of an exclusionary logic, requiring the construction and perception of variously defined others as in some way unwelcome, in some sense feared, in some measure to be denigrated. More open and inclusionary approaches to citizenship are likely sooner or later to run up against this logic, in some shape or form, at some level or another. If real and sustained progress is to be made, it will be suggested, alternative conceptions of political association and membership need to be articulated and grounded in a more confident and assertive internationalist or cosmopolitan frame of reference.