Nationality is a central concept in everyday politics. It is routinely used all over the world by very different political groups, and implicitly present in many of the basic concepts of international law, like self-determination and sovereignty. And yet, despite this, it is surprising how little there is in the way of a normative theorising of nationality in recent political theory. We often tend to take nationality at face value, whether accepting or rejecting it, sometimes making an effort to understand what nations are in empirical terms, yet we rarely see past this and wonder how we should understand them. In other words, there is a notable gap regarding how we should think about nationality in normative terms.
In this paper I argue for a normative understanding of nationality based on John Rawls’s political constructivism. I defend that the reason nationality is relevant for political theory is based on its importance for justice, rather than on any essentialist or particularist concern, and argue that this should prompt us to look for a political view of nationality. I then explain why this position cannot be accurately defined by resorting to the usual notions of civic vs. ethnic nationalism, the theories of nation-building, or appeals to the idea of sovereignty. Instead, I argue that a political idea of nationality is best understood through the lens of constructivism. In this line, I defend a view of nationality that is political, not metaphysical, and which is based on reasonableness, not on truth.
Alberto González Fernández is a PhD Candidate in Political Theory at the University of Santiago de Compostela.