Cornelisse Galina

This author's articles

• European Integration and Immigration by Third-Country Nationals: The Obduracy of the National Border

  17 December 2007
  For the early French Revolutionaries, the concept of the nation did not serve as a vehicle for territorial states’ exclusionist practices. Neither did they conceive of national identity primarily as a criterion by which to distinguish between «us» and «them». For them, the concept of the nation gave expression to the radical idea of an inclusive political community based the concept of popular sovereignty, equality and unalienable rights. However, the territoriality of global political organisation led to a different role for nationalism on the global political stage than which could have been foreseen by the early Revolutionaries. Contemporary nationalism is defined by the very distinction between «us» and «them» and its original promise of individual rights and freedoms often seems to be in direct contradiction with everyday reality.