This article asks how, in early post-World War II Canada, Syrian, Armenian, and Lebanese communities claimed whiteness in the context of Canada’s racially restrictive immigration regulations that defined them as “Asiatics,” and hence inadmissible. But, it also examines how Canadian politicians and immigration bureaucrats responded to those claims. Using so-far untapped archival records, this article shows that immigration authorities were unwilling to redefine the racial status of these groups out of fear that doing so would provide a wedge for other groups of “Asiatics” to press for the ability to migrate to Canada. In this case, Syrians, Armenians, and Lebanese could be regarded as experiencing collateral damage in the politics of whiteness. While Canadian immigration authorities seemed to privately accept the white/European identity claims of these groups, they were nonetheless unwilling to publicly grant them one of the privileges of whiteness – namely the ability to migrate to Canada on a basis equal to that of other white immigrants. Instead, the government used “merit-based” orders-in-council as an under the radar administrative mechanism to admit members of these groups. This allowed the government and the immigration department to avoid a larger public debate about racial discrimination against “Asiatic” immigrants.

In the Spanish region of Galicia, immediately north of Portugal, the Bloque Nacionalista Galego (BNG) has achieved unprecedented electoral success, emerging as a prominent nationalist force within the Spanish political landscape. This study analyzes the discursive and performative repertoires employed by Galician nationalism and explores how the prevalent dual national identity in the region shapes these strategies. Reversing Brubaker’s theoretical framework and using framing and visual analysis, we compare the BNG’s strategies during two different institutional settings: its time in government (2005–2009) and its role leading the opposition (2020–2023). The findings reveal the failure of Galician nationalism to nationalize identity when in power, as policies aimed at promoting Galician identity generated a backlash and, ultimately, produced frame dealignment between the nationalists and the Galician people. The new BNG presents a social project based on the defense of Galician interests and the moderation of the nationalist discourse. It successfully accomplishes frame alignment by adapting to the non-conflictive, dual national identity shared by most Galicians while proposing an inclusive political style.

With drastic changes in borders and regimes in the post-World War I period, what meaning did home have for those on the ground? How can we understand different conceptualizations of “home” and “homeland”? The 1923 Greek-Turkish population exchange enshrined a notion of “unmixing” that rested on a presumed overlap between religion and ethnicity: Orthodox Christians in Anatolia would be deported to Greece and Greek Muslim nationals would be deported to Turkey. The reduction of identity left other communities that necessarily did not understand themselves as “Turks” or “Greeks” vulnerable to deportation. This article examines the case of an Albanian-speaking Muslim village in Greece, Vinan (Vineni), and the people from there who were deported to Turkey as part of the exchange process. This case illuminates the ways refugees navigated consulates and new national regimes in an attempt to return to their original village. New migration pathways and concepts of home and homeland were negotiated through the process with and for the refugees. This article takes the 1923 Greek-Turkish population exchange as an ongoing process of forging new migration pathways and conceptions of home, as opposed to understanding the 1923 Greek-Turkish population exchange as a singular event.

The eruption of protests within consolidated authoritarian regimes is an infrequent event seen by many scholars as resulting from the separatist intentions of a regional elite enabled by autonomy. In this article, by analysing the July 2022 protest events in Karakalpakstan we challenge this assumed link and instead propose that the emergence of large-scale protests formed as a grassroots reaction to the symbolic loss of the region’s nominal autonomy, state repression, and the detention of popular activists. Based on semi-structured interviews in Karakalpakstan, research findings reveal a moderate and mostly non-separatist approach to the Karakalpak question and a high interconnection with Uzbekistan. The existence of an authoritarian regime in Uzbekistan and its repression mechanisms can provide a straightforward explanation of non-resistant character of Karakalpak population. However, the research showed the strong notion of Karakalpak identity, not being transformed into political demands if Uzbekistan does not harm it.

Migrant residential concentration areas have been a significant focus for research, but academic attention has primarily centered on their effects rather than how they form. There is some research considering the discrete factors of such areas’ emergence, but these factors are rarely fused into a comprehensive explanation with a description of specific mechanisms in operation. Even less is known about the formation of migrant residential concentration areas in postsocialist cities. The few studies in existence leave the impression that such areas emerge around bazaars by default. In this article, based on a multicase study (N = 37) conducted in the 15 largest Russian cities, we argue that although there is a pattern of migrant residential concentration areas’ emergence in postsocialist cities, this process takes place only in the presence of a combination of seven factors. The article presents these factors and describes an ideal type of a migrant residential concentration area in a Russian city and mechanisms of its emergence. The article concludes with the comparison of the postsocialist pattern with other types of migrant residential concentration and hypothesizing on how the Russian case differs from the other postsocialist cases in Central and Eastern Europe.

The goal of this article is to show Russia’s civilizational turn in the broader context of imperial nationalism. The “turn” is a manifestation of imperial nationalism that today feeds not only on political ideas and history but also on geography. In the mass perception, geography is seen as an objective, non-ideologized scientific discipline less prone to political manipulation. Because of this, it can be employed to influence the Russian self-identification process in a much more subtle and efficient way than references to the more abstract notion of civilization. This article presents the Russian Geographical Society (RGS) as an identity entrepreneur managed by the ruling elite with a well-developed regional structure. It functions as a community of imperial practice. With its discursive and material practices, the RGS contributes to reproducing imperial nationalism, including in its civilizational version. The RGS is the keeper of the imperial body. By referring to the imperial body, I mean not just the physical territory but also the ways it is imagined in discourse and made material in numerous practices.

When we study the Jewish-national historiography of the last quarter of the 19th century, there is a tendency to pass directly from Smolenskin’s doctrine to the Zionist-cultural approach of Ahad Ha’am and his students, omitting the works written in between. However, even before the emergence of Ahad Ha’am as a cultural icon in the Jewish national movement, some Hibbat Zion activists engaged in Hebrew cultural activities directed at shaping national Jewish consciousness. The main figures in this trend were Saul Pinchas Rabinowitz and Avraham Shalom Friedberg. Their world view was based on education that advocated proto-nationalism: Jewish solidarity, love of the Hebrew language, promoting Hebrew newspapers, and preserving Jewish tradition. To this they added settlement in Eretz Israel as a solution for the harsh conditions of the Jews in Russia. They edited literary and scientific collections in Hebrew and Jewish historiography and wrote historical monographs and biographies. In this way, they sought to introduce national historical protagonists instead of the Hasskala’s pantheon of historical characters to vividly illuminate periods of historical “golden ages” suited to the national ideology and teach the lesson of historical history—that Hibbat Zion is the solution to the plight of Jews and Judaism.

Based on the discursive analysis of 28 semidirected interviews conducted in the small industrial town of Martfű, this article reflects on the role played by nationalism in the construction of political and cultural hegemony by Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz, Hungary’s ruling party since 2010. The ten themes mobilised by the respondents to express their vision of the Hungarian nation (identification, belonging, commitment, transmission, territory, uniqueness/fragility, heterogeneity/homogeneity, unity/division, east/west, and insubordination) and the issues attached to them (relationship to Hungarian minorities of neighbouring countries, relationship to the European Union, immigration, etc.) are paralleled with Fidesz’s discourse. On those subjects, Orbán’s party’s nationalism positions itself in a “central” way, managing to incarnate heterogeneous conceptions of the nation that are shared among this research’s respondents by Fidesz as well as non-Fidesz voters.

This article offers a nuanced examination of the complex identity dynamics among the Christian and Muslim communities in Cyprus during the late 19th and early 20th century, particularly in the aftermath of British administration replacing Ottoman rule in 1878. The article draws attention to the profound impact of this historical transition on the identity formation processes of both communities. Despite the shared wartime experience of the First World War, the Christian and Muslim communities in Cyprus failed to construct a cohesive identity rooted in their common geographical space. Drawing on Zygmunt Bauman’s concept of ambivalence, the article explores the complex process by which Cypriot communities sought to align their identity with larger nations, namely Greece and Turkey, rather than grounding it in their local context. The article contends that the genesis of their ambivalence can be traced back to 1878 when British administration replaced Ottoman rule on the island.

This article explores Bernard Stiegler’s concept of Epiphylogenesis as an alternative framework for understanding modern nations while aspiring to resolve major gaps in the classic theories of Benedict Anderson and Anthony Smith. Epiphylogenesis offers a fresh perspective and broader scope for the study of nations, with a view to critically enlarging the dynamic interaction between modern mass media and cultural traditions, particularly as conceptualized by Anderson and Smith. Stiegler classifies modern nations as chapters in the broader narrative of technical evolution. In epiphylogenesis, cultural traditions and technical artefacts function as a working partnership; modern nations are seen as the outcome of this co-constitutive process, wherein mass media technical systems (that is, print capitalism) exteriorize cultural traditions (ethnié), dressing them up in distinctive, open, pervasive, and standardized forms. This discussion concludes by exploring the relevance of epiphylogenesis for assessing the impact of networked communications on contemporary national identities.

Throughout the Cold War, Yugoslavia was the only socialist country that participated in the Western-led international refugee regime and acted as a transit zone for refugees hoping to reach the Western Bloc. Those transiting were mainly, but not exclusively, escapees from various countries in the Soviet bloc. A few refugee groups also settled in Yugoslavia against the backdrop of shifts in international constellations, tense relationships with neighboring countries, and transnational mobilizations. This article will first investigate the dichotomy between transit and the few instances of refugees integrating into socialist Yugoslavia. Next, it will investigate the ease of the resettlement process by exploring how the length of time spent in the country was influenced by hierarchies among different refugee groups based on ethnic origin, political allegiances, class, and which opportunities for resettlement were available to whom. Finally, it will reflect on how the changing role of temporary refuge or permanent haven that Yugoslavia ascribed to itself was constructed and challenged by the host society, potential countries of resettlement, and the refugees themselves.

Egor Lazarev has offered us a book of uncommon ambition and erudition. At its core, State-Building as Lawfare: Custom, Sharia, and State Law in Postwar Chechnya explores how elites and ordinary citizens pursue their interests by weighing the costs and benefits of using alternative legal frameworks in postwar Chechnya. By describing how politicians encourage nonstate legal remedies to build political coalitions—and how everyday Chechens engage in forum shopping when trying to manage their own legal issues—Lazarev teaches us about the challenges associated with the extension of state legal institutions in the wake of prolonged, nationalist conflict. Although Lazarev treats his exploration of legal pluralism as the theoretical framing for the book, such a reading belies what I view as his primary empirical contribution: a meticulous exploration of gender politics in the North Caucasus. In this review, I describe Lazarev’s arguments about elite and citizen legal strategies, discuss his understanding of gender disputes in a postconflict Muslim society, and offer a provocation for future research that would situate the study of Chechnya in a broader literature on autocratic politics.