This article reviews recent literature concerned with the analysis of the relationship between nationalism and economy. First, it discusses scholarship advocating a new understanding of the concept of “economic nationalism” beyond its traditional focus on protectionist state policies. Second, the article branches out to consider a more interdisciplinary body of literature addressing the nationalism-economy nexus, and it relates this literature to broader debates in nationalism studies, distinguishing between three prominent approaches in the discipline: nationalism as political movement and ideology; nationalism as political discourse; and everyday nationalism. The article concludes with suggestions for future research.

Climate change has rapidly expanded as a key topic of research across disciplines, but it has remained virtually untouched in nationalism studies. Climate change is a boundless, uncontainable phenomenon that ignores class, geographic, and ethnonational boundaries. As such, it can hardly be comprehended within the limits of a nationalist world vision. This article reassesses this intuition by focusing on the situational and adaptive plasticity of nationalism, characterized by its notorious Janus-faced adaptability. I first identify and address a methodological stumbling block that precludes scholars in some areas of the humanities and social sciences—specifically nationalism studies—from conceptualizing and grappling with this unfolding reality. Second, I advance a typology that can work as a conceptual grid for studying similar problems that emerge at the intersection of environmental politics, climate change, and nationalism studies. I suggest two ways in which the nation and national narratives have been and are being mobilized to make sense of, contrast, reject, and incorporate new life-changing trends. I identify these, respectively, under the umbrella terms resource nationalism and green nationalism. I conclude by emphasizing the continuing relevance of nationalism in plans for ongoing global energy transitions.

The dispute between Greece and the newly formed state referred to as the “Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia” that emerged out of the collapse of Yugoslavia in 1991 was a major source of instability in the Western Balkans for more than 25 years. It was resolved through negotiations between Athens and Skopje, mediated by the United Nations, resulting in the Prespa (or Prespes) Agreement, which was signed on June 17, 2018, and ratified by both parliaments amid controversy in their countries. The underlying issues involved deeply held and differing views relating to national identity, history, and the future of the region, which were resolved through a change in the name of the new state and various agreements as to identity issues. The author, the United Nations mediator in the dispute for 20 years and previously the United States presidential envoy with reference to the dispute, describes the basis of the dispute, the positions of the parties, and the factors that led to a successful resolution.

This review article outlines the literature on nonterritorial autonomy (NTA) from the renewed interest in the concept in the mid-2000s until today. First, the article provides a brief overview of the meaning of NTA and the rationale behind it, highlighting how, in academic literature, NTA oscillates between positions that treat it as an attractive option and a highly impractical system (difficult to realize in practice or even pin down conceptually). Second, the article looks at trends in the existing literature, which has approached NTA with various emphases: the functions it fulfils (or has fulfilled); its (at times) supplementary role vis-à-vis territorial autonomy; and the dynamics that have led to its introduction in some countries, with attendant implications. Third, the article outlines some of NTA’s complexities, suggesting future areas of research, with reference to the interaction of territoriality and nonterritoriality, collective rights and participation, and potentially negative consequences of NTA regimes.

This article situates the development of the kin-state politics literature within the context of post-Cold War scholarship on ethnicity, nationalism, and conflict. It outlines how an increasingly mature literature emerged around the domestic political and foreign policy drivers of kin-state politics as scholars drew from a number of perspectives, from the literature on irredentism to that on diaspora politics and transborder nationalism. The article then evaluates scholarship on the drivers and impacts of kin-state politics, with a focus on the consequences of kin-state politics for the cultural and political landscape of external kin communities and the impact on regional security and stability. While a rich and nuanced literature has helped to contextualize the tensions and complexities of the former, I argue that the latter needs to be developed further. Careful work needs to be done to more precisely establish the conditions under which kin-state politics constitute a security threat. Future scholarship should bring together a more ground level perspective of how kin-state policies are perceived, utilized, and/or instrumentalized by their intended subjects with a critical understanding of how the “game” of kin-state politics is played within the home state and the kin-state.

The 20th century has been a century of political famines, that is, famines directly—and at times willfully—caused by human policies, in war1 and in peacetime. Scores of millions starved to death in times during which there was enough food to feed everyone and the means to transport it where needed.

This article reviews recent developments in scholarship on gastronationalism, or more broadly, food and nationalism. It finds while the concept of gastronationalism per se has not been rigorously developed, scholarship of food and nationalism in general has been developing fast. A major development in the study of gastronationalism is the introduction of the everyday nationhood/banal nationalism perspective, which in turn diverts the focus away from the state’s intervention, a point emphasized by Michaela DeSoucey. The review of the field suggests that a renewed focus on the role of food in the interaction between state actors and international organizations would further refine the concept of gastronationalism. As for the study of food and nationalism, efforts to integrate findings from existing case studies to produce an overall understanding of society are needed.

Migrants are often presented in simplified terms that focus on the threats they experience or pose to the host society. This produces an image of migrants who have no agency and are victims of their circumstances or who respond to their circumstances by turning to crime and illegality. In this special issue, we reframe migration by highlighting how migrants leverage the various vulnerabilities they encounter, turning them into agency and self-sufficiency. We explore different types of vulnerability and agency for migrants in the Eurasian region, which often originate from the same sources, including structural factors, state and governance practices, social networks, and gender roles. Through interactions with a variety of state and nonstate actors, migrants have the ability to make choices that reduce uncertainty and risk in their migration environment and on returning home. These choices coexist with vulnerability and a lack of formal rights but do not replace them, creating complex and contingent relationships between precarity and agency.

In this article, we show how judgments of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) have provided nationalists with an unexpected opportunity to promote a nationalist discourse that is seemingly in line with human rights while fundamentally at odds with the counter-majoritarian core of human rights. We start our analysis with two judgments in which the Court accepted the arguments of liberal democratic states to infringe fundamental rights of persons belonging to (immigrant) Muslim minorities in the name of “requirements of living together” or “social integration”: SAS v France (2014) and Osmanoglu and Kocabas v Switzerland (2017). Strikingly, the justifications by the states for these infringements point to concerns about perceived threats to national identity and culture. We show how nationalist politicians in countries with minority populations, including those in East Central Europe, have used justifications in terms of national self-protection, tacitly or explicitly, to pursue old anti–human rights agendas. The case law discussed here enabled them to present these justifications as ECtHR proof, notwithstanding the underlying nationalism.

Nationalism has long been understood to be a deeply gendered phenomenon. This article provides an overview of some of the key concepts and literature in the study of gender and nationalism, including women; gender; the nation and the intersection of sexuality, race, and migration; and gender within nationalist imaginations. It offers some future research agendas that might be pursued in work on gender and nationalism—namely the gendered dimensions of populism or “new” nationalism.

Numerous contemporary examples attest to the continued political salience of ethnic identification. This is the case even in multi-ethnic societies bound together by a strong overarching sense of patriotism, but it is most especially so in contexts where ethnicity has historically functioned as the building block of modern nations (Rudolph 2006). Since today’s world contains many more ethnoculturally defined nations than it does states, a tension persists between the principle of self-determination of peoples and the principle of territorial integrity of existing polities (Dembinska, Máracz, and Tonk 2014). The almost invariable overlapping of different ethno-national populations within the same territorial space renders the nation-state concept inherently problematic as a modality for ethnically based self-determination, for while all nation-state projects dictate cultural uniformity, all must contend with differing degrees of pluralism. Within the nation-state frame, those who do not profess belonging to the dominant ethnocultural community are consigned to the category of “national minority” and thereby deemed an anomaly and a barrier to the creation of a “good political order.”1 In this context, claims by minority national and ethnic communities for recognition of collective rights can be easily construed as a threat to the security of the state and its dominant ethno-national group, leading to situations of tension and—in the worst case—open conflict.

The study of everyday ethnicity emphasizes the importance of seeking the perspectives of the masses regarding processes of ethnic identity formation and ethnic boundary maintenance. In contrast to elite-centered approaches, everyday ethnicity attempts to understand how ethnicity is constructed from the bottom-up. However, seeking the everyday presents researchers with a number of distinct challenges. Prevalent among these obstacles is a tendency of non-elite respondents to direct scholars to elite authorities when responding to questions about ethnic identity, claiming they lack expertise or qualifications to speak on the subject. This epistemic deference toward elite sources may be particularly acute in ethno-religious communities, where the hierarchies of religious orders may reinforce the gulf of “knowledge” between clergy and lay believers. This article examines the problem of epistemic deference through a case study of everyday ethnicity in urban Hui Muslim communities in China. Drawing on data collected over the course of 152 interviews and numerous ethnographic observations conducted in four cities in China (Beijing, Jinan, Yinchuan, and Xining) between July 2015 and July 2016, the article illustrates the challenges posed by epistemic deference to field researchers in religious communities.

Within the growing literature on de facto states and disputed territories, the parastate stands as the most contentious challenge to international sovereignty and one of the greatest threats to regional security. Parastates are territorial entities that have unilaterally declared independence and control territory claimed by another state. Though parastates have been a part of international studies since the 1960s, the collapse of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia have produced a number of breakaway entities that have challenged existing understandings of state theory and security studies. Without full legal international recognition, the de facto statehood of parastates cannot transform into de jure sovereignty. This special section introduces our collaborative project on the nature, scope, orientation, and character of parastates; a small, select, and particularly problematic subunit of the de facto state family. Though many of these examples should be familiar to researchers of disputed territories, we feel some that have been previously categorized as de facto, contested, or even unrecognized states are better understood as parastates due to the indefinite frozen conflict they find themselves in for years, if not decades.

Russia is one of the world’s largest migrant-receiving countries. The recession of recent years, changes in labor market and immigration policies, and an increase in anti-foreign sentiment have directly affected immigrants’ lives in Russia. This has been reflected not only in how immigrants find employment and housing in the country but also in how they perceive Russia as a country in which to work and live. This article analyzes remigration as a coping strategy of Afghan immigrants in Russia. These immigrants face severe everyday difficulties as irregular migrants and suffer discrimination and uncertainty. Despite their low status and vulnerability, we argue that Afghan immigrants still have agency, evident in how they interpret and live in the Russian anti-immigrant atmosphere. The article is based on stories narrated by Afghan immigrants in Russia and a qualitative content analysis of the asylum application protocols of Afghan asylum seekers in Finland that was produced by the Finnish Border Guard, Police, and the Finnish Immigration Service. A total of 632 Afghan citizens applied for asylum after entering Finland from the Russian Federation along the “Arctic route” between 2015 and 2016.

The present contribution analyzes systematically diplomatic reports written by German, Italian, British, and Polish representatives in the Soviet Union at the time of the Great Famine. Based on both published documents and unpublished archival sources, the article examines comparatively the perception of the Great Famine in these four countries. After providing a short overview of the diplomatic relations between the Soviet Union and the four countries at the time of the famine, this article examines how German, Italian, British, and Polish diplomats explained three key issues for understanding the Great Famine: (1) the role of the conflicts between state and peasantry in unleashing the famine; (2) the issue of whether the Soviet government intentionally caused the famine; and (3) the role of intentions in the development of the famine and the relationship between the nationalities policy of the Soviet government and the famine.

A theory of nationalism should explain the evidence provided by the historical record, but also provide unexpected insight. The modernist theory of nationalism, espoused among others by Benedict Anderson and Eric Hobsbawm, provides a surprising chronology of nationalism’s modernity. The modernization theory of nationalism has attracted extensive criticism from Anthony Smith, who proposed instead a theory he called “ethnosymbolism.” This article considers Smith’s critique of Anderson and then his critique of Hobsbawm, finding that Smith’s objections to modernist theorists rest on mischaracterizations, fallacies, and contradictions. Smith’s approach caters to the primordialism rampant in public opinion, providing scholarly respectability to popular misconceptions. Scholars of nationalism should look instead to Rogers Brubaker for guidance.

This article sheds light on the informal institutional settings that guide the social and economic lives of Muslim migrants in Moscow. Mosques and medresses (Muslim theological schools) serve as central locations from which these institutions emanate, evolve, and transform. Case studies of trade networks and Hijama (wet cupping) healing practices demonstrate the inner workings of such institutions. The article draws on the theoretical traditions of informal institutions and new institutionalists focusing on anthropological works on agency and institutions. These analytical frameworks and concepts help explain the mechanisms and processes involved in the institutionalization of Muslim lives in Moscow. I argue that individual agency and charismatic leadership of individual members of the community play formative roles in institutionalizing daily practices and constituting normative orders of Muslims in Moscow. The article is based on fieldwork conducted in Moscow and Perm during 2016, 2017, and 2019.

The literature on “everyday nationalism” foregrounds constructivist practice theory as well as interpretivist methodologies. Our project—Making Identity Count—does something similar but with an aim to advance the study of International Relations rather than the study of nationalism. Here, we suggest that these two approaches are basically complementary, and that a theoretical and methodological cross-fertilization between them may yield new insights in both fields.