So what happens to nationalism if many more people are either moving from place to place or or at least relocating from where they were raised? Does it become stronger among the relatively few who stay put? How do they handle being outnumbered by “the others”? Do the movers become citizens of the world?
Well, you might have the Dubai model with a small number of citizens (roughly 5% in the case of Dubai) and the rest viewing it transactionally. One could scoff at that, because the numbers are so extreme in the case of Dubai, but the whole discourse of "diversity is what makes us strong" is being discarded like yesterday's trash. While moving from one state to another doesn't trigger dystopian images, you start to get a larger and larger group of people who move further afield.
2 weeks ago
But I would point out that, while you feel your new roots are shallow, you are hardly someone who is perpetually moving. (I’d put the threshold for “perpetually moving”/rootless at relocating every couple of years or less.)
We seem to be reaching a point where everyone will be more like me: perhaps not perpetually moving, but moving enough that the idea of being rooted in a place no longer holds. I feel like that inflection point is coming in the next few decades, helped along by the fact that climate will make the places we live so different from what they were. People may not be perpetually moving, but the place they are living will change with enough speed and strength as to make everyone strangers in their own towns.
2 weeks ago
In reality, there have always been those who put down roots, and those who kept moving. As far as I can see, that is still true today.
Is it really? I have tried to put down roots here, and I think I've done a good job, but given that it has been a conscious effort, I have to say that those roots aren't deep, certainly not as deep as Japanese from here. And even for my wife, who is from Hokkaido, those roots aren't so deep. And certainly, those roots are shortened even for those who are from here, with cultural touchstones fading and replaced by consumption events. At some point a difference in degree becomes a difference in kind.
2 weeks ago
GftNC, thanks!
I was struck by the close of that article, which was:
“Maybe the future is just participation, not belonging,” she mused. “Maybe we are done putting down roots and will just keep moving.”
2 weeks ago
I read this NYT article
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/11/opinion/dubai-migration-trump.html
but didn't finish it and lost the page that had the gift link. Some pages suggest that Dubai is 92% 'immigrant' and the article had some discussion about a rethinking of what citizenship is and means.
2 weeks ago
There was a ten-year period during the Blair government England had more immigration than during the previous thousand years.
Keep those context free facts coming Charles! There were probably as many, if not more who came from 1950-60. However, at that time, they were called citizens of the Empire, not immigrants.
So what happens to nationalism if many more people are either moving from place to place or or at least relocating from where they were raised? Does it become stronger among the relatively few who stay put? How do they handle being outnumbered by “the others”? Do the movers become citizens of the world?
Well, you might have the Dubai model with a small number of citizens (roughly 5% in the case of Dubai) and the rest viewing it transactionally. One could scoff at that, because the numbers are so extreme in the case of Dubai, but the whole discourse of "diversity is what makes us strong" is being discarded like yesterday's trash. While moving from one state to another doesn't trigger dystopian images, you start to get a larger and larger group of people who move further afield.
But I would point out that, while you feel your new roots are shallow, you are hardly someone who is perpetually moving. (I’d put the threshold for “perpetually moving”/rootless at relocating every couple of years or less.)
We seem to be reaching a point where everyone will be more like me: perhaps not perpetually moving, but moving enough that the idea of being rooted in a place no longer holds. I feel like that inflection point is coming in the next few decades, helped along by the fact that climate will make the places we live so different from what they were. People may not be perpetually moving, but the place they are living will change with enough speed and strength as to make everyone strangers in their own towns.
In reality, there have always been those who put down roots, and those who kept moving. As far as I can see, that is still true today.
Is it really? I have tried to put down roots here, and I think I've done a good job, but given that it has been a conscious effort, I have to say that those roots aren't deep, certainly not as deep as Japanese from here. And even for my wife, who is from Hokkaido, those roots aren't so deep. And certainly, those roots are shortened even for those who are from here, with cultural touchstones fading and replaced by consumption events. At some point a difference in degree becomes a difference in kind.
GftNC, thanks!
I was struck by the close of that article, which was:
I read this NYT article
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/11/opinion/dubai-migration-trump.html
but didn't finish it and lost the page that had the gift link. Some pages suggest that Dubai is 92% 'immigrant' and the article had some discussion about a rethinking of what citizenship is and means.
There was a ten-year period during the Blair government England had more immigration than during the previous thousand years.
Keep those context free facts coming Charles! There were probably as many, if not more who came from 1950-60. However, at that time, they were called citizens of the Empire, not immigrants.