Who Belongs to the Nation? Identity, Citizenship, and the Politics of Belonging

Abstract

This panel examines different configurations of national belonging, from ethnic perceptions to class-positions, educational access and spatial inequalities. It brings together papers that examine how national belonging is defined, taught, perceived, and contested. Collectively, the papers show how (the politics of) national belonging operates not as a fixed set of inclusionary and exclusionary measure but as a set of shifting boundaries that determine who counts as a legitimate member of nation states, under what conditions, and with what consequences for inclusion/exclusion and, notably, democratic cohesion.