Ethno‐traditional nationalism and the challenge of immigration

Abstract

The rise of the populist right in the West is emerging as the most discussed manifestation of nationalism in the world today. In this paper, I argue that this 'new nationalism' is largely driven by immigration, which affects ethnic majorities within nation-states. This in turn alters the ethnic character of the nation, challenging what I term the ethno-traditions of nationhood. Our inherited concepts of ethnic and civic nationalism were developed in an earlier period when immigration was limited and territorial revisionism animated nationalist movements. Only on the furthest reaches of the extreme right is the worldview one of ethnic nationalism. In our demographically churning yet territorially static western world, we need a new term to describe the cultural nationalism of the anti-immigration right. I characterise this as ethno-traditional nationalism, a variety of nationalism which seeks to protect the traditional preponderance of ethnic majorities through slower immigration and assimilation but which does not seek to close the door entirely to migration or exclude minorities from national membership.The rise of the populist right in the West is emerging as the most discussed manifestation of nationalism in the world today. In this paper, I argue that this 'new nationalism' is largely driven by immigration, which affects ethnic majorities within nation-states. This in turn alters the ethnic character of the nation, challenging what I term the ethno-traditions of nationhooda change which mobilises resistance among both majority and minority cultural conservatives. In other words, the ethnic majority and other established ethnic groups are symbols of the nation alongside other reference points such as language or ideology. This approach represents an extension of Anthony Smith's (1998) theory of ethnosymbolism. Rather than apply it to the origin of nations, I use it to account for the motivation of leaders of, and voters for, populist right political parties. These aim to protect the ethnic majoritya symbol of the nationthrough immigration restriction and ethnic assimilation.Unfortunately, our theories of nationalism were either developed during periods of limited immigration or grew from historical analyses of periods in

How official nationalism fuels labour market discrimination against migrants in the Netherlands and its institutional alternatives

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“…al. 2019;Jardina 2019;Abramowitz 2018;Kaufmann 2016Kaufmann , 2019.…”

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