Is Nationalism A Source Of Cohesion?

Is nationalism a source of cohesion or conflict?

Nationalism is the attitude that the members of a nation take in seeking to achieve a form of political sovereignty when they care about their identity. This shared identity is often based on common origin, ethnicity, values and traditions. Thus, nationalism creates a social structure imagined by people who conform to a certain set of values and harbors social cohesion between those alike, while also creating conflict between different communities of people. The impact of nationalism rests heavily on the history and formation of the state in its nation-building period. In its attempt to establish sovereignty, states like Singapore promoted multiculturalism as a core to its history and has been
A policy influenced by any single race is impractical, as it is impossible to expect others to support values that do not align with their own. Thus, in attempt to foster ethnic cohesion between the Chinese, Malay, Indians, the Singapore government built a national identity based on multi-racialism and bilingualism in schools. These aspects are deeply ingrained into the youths of the nation through the education system, and as a result has become a building block of the nation. This leads to the formation of “deep, horizontal comradeship”, seen as “imagined communities” by Andersen (2006), to describe the phenomena of anonymous connections and mutual respect between people who they will never ever
The belief is embodied in the UK Independence Party and its policies opposing immigration and membership to the European Union. Tied to its history of a colonial state with a “peculiar imagining of history and power”, the UK acts to “conserve itself in a particular idealized” British identity. This act of new nationalism seeks to “reconstruct national identity… as unitary and static” in response to the threat of hybridity of cultures. UKIP’s opposition against the free movement of people within the EU, secondary to the larger issue of the UK EU Membership Referendum is a demonstration of the state’s strong desire to regain sovereignty over border control. The struggle for cooperation trickles down the local level where integration and assimilation becomes a main concern regarding immigration. Apart for diluting perceptions from Britishness, immigration poses a serious threat to cohesion and attracts various negative stigmas such as poverty. This outcome attracts unequal treatment within society and puts ethnic minorities in “moral isolation”, giving them more reason to stick within their own group of people. As these “imagined communities” grow and thrive, they are seen as outsiders and threat to the British identity. The segregation is further exacerbated through nation-freezing tools such as