Introduction

Transnational Identities 293
(Hedetoft and Hjort vii). 12 The nation-state’s relation to such notions becomes
even clearer in Ulf Hannerz’ definition of the term ‘home.’ He speaks of ‘home’ as
being a “familiar social space because we have it quite well mapped – even the
people we do not know personally act in more or less expected ways” (219). For
him, it is marked by “relative transparency in social traffic” for the one whose
home it is and to which, because of time spent there, we “develop a sense of belonging”
(219). ‘Home’ in this sense is clearly marked by commonality with and
connectedness to the people in one’s social location. Because of this, being home
is to experience a certain feeling of groupness and since this groupness is furthermore
linked to a specific territory because of “identities-borders-orders”, ‘home’ is
located in the nation-state.
It is obvious that this groupness stems in part from the “narratives, public
rituals and institutions” and so forth mentioned above. However, all this is not
simply imposed by the nation-state in order to strengthen a “sense of collective
identity” but the state also “draws upon” it according to Vertovec’s definition.
This implies that there is a “collective identity”, which seems to precede and justify
the formation of the nation-state. Ernest Renan refers to this when he stresses
that a nation is made up of two aspects of which one is “a rich legacy of memories”
and the other “present-day consent, the desire to live together, the will to
perpetuate the value of the heritage that one has received” (19). These memories
and heritage clearly indicate that the nation-state is accordingly not only understood
as a person’s home but also becomes an entity which encloses a group of
people joined together by common traditions or a shared culture, which unites its
members because its commonality stresses their similarities. This in turn allows
them to connect to one another and evoke feelings of groupness. Since this
groupness is, however, also confined to a specific geographic area, the nation-state
thus becomes congruent with a specific culture, which can be seen best in the way
the words ‘nation’ and ‘nation-state’ are used interchangeably (Brennan 45).
The nation-state thus has a powerful influence on people’s sense of who they
are and where they belong since according to such a definition it turns into an allencompassing
source of all aspects of identity. After all, in this understanding of a
nation, the nation-state is formed because its members already have a sense of
collective identity prior to its formation which is strengthened after its formation
because it then reiterates and reinforces what already brought this group together
by identifying and categorizing its members. The inhabitants in turn can hardly
escape being influenced in their self-understanding by these surroundings. It is
therefore not surprising that it is frequently pointed out that in the twentieth century
the nation came to be seen as home, and people’s sense of belonging was
generated by nation-states (J. Hall 55; Löfgren 259).
12 However, they admit that this definition only “delineates the contours of an ideal state of affairs”
and that home and belonging are much more complicated in reality since the aforementioned
notions can be in conflict with each other (Hedetoft and Hjort vii-viii).