Nation-state or country-state: how do we discuss belonging in an age of fluidity?

The use of the term "nation-state" confuses current debate around countries, states and nations. We need new rhetorical structures to help us make sense of this age of uncertainty, where the mass movement of individuals has caused the erosion of the homogenous cores around which nation-states around the world were once built.

Nation-state or country-state: how do we discuss belonging in an age of fluidity? Originally published by openDemocracy, April 12, 2011. [I did not think this short essay would spark a debate, but it did. See Michael Gardiner’s counter-argument here. I wrote the essay in a worry over the homogenizing effect of “nationalism”, particularly so as […]

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