Culture, Community, Country
In a world of increased mobility, do you feel if your country is the same as your culture, if your goverment synchronises with your personal values, if your religion or language remains part of the national tapestry and if your citizenship is your ethnicity?
There are still homogenous demographics remaining within several nations, despite the rise of multi-cultural diversity in Western societies and the historical mixing of different races within countries formed from the legacy of colonialism.
Thailand, Japan, China, both North and South Korea, Russia and Latin American nations have a high degree of having a shared spoken and written language, which further strengthens their sense of cultural heritage. Thailand is perhaps the only non European country in the world to be not subject to colonialism.
In terms of having less diverse populations, Japan does stand out due to their de-emphasis on accepting migrants and their geographical nature of being a string of islands.
In contrast, Australia, Israel and Canada have allowed the settlement of peoples from around 200 other nations. Israel welcomes migrants with a shared cultural and religious background. Australia and Canada especially encourage the use of languages other than English.
The USA had been heralded as a promised land attracting, amongst many, war torn migrants from Europe, Spanish speakers from south of its borders, students from an Asia with rising incomes and Middle Easterners. The USA claims to be the original melting pot in nation building in recent history.
The European continent saw the regular redrawing of national boundaries due to war, political alliances, royal marriages, religious transformations and internal migrations, especially in the past 200 years before the 21st century.
Immigration can change the nature of societies - look at France, Australian capital cities, the proportion of non Muslims falling in Malaysia, Birmingham in the United Kingdom and Germany in recent years.
The island nation of Singapore utilises racial numbers as a critical factor in ensuring racial harmony in a small country. South Africa has up to a dozen official languages. The modern Republic of India was federated from lands with different languages and ethnicities collated under the rule of Britain and the former British East India Company.
There are small islands in the South Pacific that are still linked politically, culturally and financially to European masters, a legacy of the 19th century.
The carving of territories by colonial powers, at times subjectively, has divided people of the same culture across different nation states - think for example, of the Kurdish; the indigenous peoples of Papua New Guinea; and the Arabs.
Indigenous peoples across many parts of the world have lost their original nationhood. Those still having some structural sense of independence are grouped around New Zealand, where the Maoris perhaps maintain the highest level of political dignity for indigenous peoples.
Increasingly it can get harder for an individual to assert that my country, my government, my culture, my religion, my personal values, my citizenship, my mother tongue and my ethnicity share a high degree of commonality.
Perhaps the idea of a nation state is increasingly irrelevant. World citizenship can resolve many administrative issues. However the inherent nature of mankind can continue to be divisive, to differentiate and to dominate over others.
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