In academic literature and policy documentation the terms ‘statebuilding’ and ‘nation-building’ are often used interchangeably, when in fact they are very distinct though interrelated processes: the task of reconstructing sustainable national institutions, that is, statebuilding, can only be successful insofar as it is accompanied by the development of a sense of citizenship strengthening the relationship between the state and its population as well as amongst its population, that is, nation-building. Using the case of Dili, in Timor Leste, this paper demonstrates how people living in very different social, economic and historical urban contexts perceive the impact of state policies, as influenced by the exogenous statebuilding project, and how these perceptions in turn affect the development of social cohesion at local, urban or national level leading to the social construction of spaces of citizenship potentially undermining the construction of a national citizenship, that is, nation-building.
