Transnational Nationalisms Reflections on Nationalism and Territory in Globalization

ABSTRACT Transnational practices redefine nationalism: a nonterritorial sense of belonging for groups and extraterritorial sovereignty for states. Territory is at the core of the analysis in both cases. For groups and communities' transnationalism leads to a new imagined community guided by an “imagined geography” that is not territorial. For states, transnationalism reflects the extraterritoriality of belonging for their citizens “abroad” and sovereignty. It amounts to keeping therefore the nation linked with its citizenship or, conversely, citizenship linked with its nation but in either case deterritorialized or extraterritorial with regard to national communities. In both cases, transnationalism leads to a confrontation of two senses of “peoplehood”, based on nation‐state nationalism on the one hand and based on a communal identity transformed and reinforced by transnational solidarity unbounded on the other hand. The main question addressed in this paper is how transnational dynamics affect the relationship between territory and nationalism. Transnational nationalism expressed by groups and communities increases polarization in national societies unified around one political community; states' transnationalism aims to reframe national identities within and without territorially bounded nations. After an overview of various relationships between nationalism and territory and their evolution in time and historical circumstances, this article will explore the two approaches of transnational nationalisms: nonterritorial transnational nationalism of groups and communities and extraterritorial transnational nationalism of states. Based on the experience of postcolonial migration in Europe, from Muslim societies in the large majority, this article will analyse the effect of transnational dynamics on the polarization of territorial national societies and groups by questioning the relationship between territory and the nation, between citizenship and belonging. But the main question is how transnational nationalisms give new strength to the national question and becomes a stake of legitimacy in the international system.