Political Theory - Migratory policy: Xenophobia Part II Negative Nationalism and National Identity

Today we are going to work on the concept of negative nationalism   is somewhat a combination of Xenophobia and the construction of the Other points seen in my last posts on this subject ( check it at this Link to Xenophobia post); in Argentina this particular social phenomena is virtually inexistent in general, note every society no matter how open has pockets of people that we always see people from outside as a menace. In our case here in Argentina only at the beginning of the century you can find an example, where you can see a nastygeneralized outburst of nationalism in reaction of the local population and the State against the arrival of Spanish anarchists, which provoked a nationalist wave of opposition against some European immigrants.

 And Now the concept of national identity as it is conceived by a negative nationalist is only one facet of the identity of the Argentine State (or any State), it’s one of the many other facets, and this aspect of its identity may have greater or lesser prominence over the others and my change over time. One must contrast the national identity of a patriotic person is quite different that of an ultra-nationalist; it’s much more constructive and a positive civic trait, patriotism which I'll define as love for the States institutions is something States must build among its population. National identity really takes life when this identity is confronted by another exterior identity of another State; this interaction is the basic process in the birth of the social identity of a State. Most facets of the national identity coexist within one predominate identity of the State, there may be other sub-national identities, these in turn, they can or cannot contribute to the identity of the State. Each State is faced with the decision to accept these sub-national identities. Each State has three options, that can vary in degree: it adopts the concept of the “melting pot”,  finds a way to assimilate migrants and try to eliminate cultural, racial or ethnic heterogeneity or it does nothing to assimilate or intigrate people that arrive to its territory to live. Argentina has two important sub-national groups, people that  belonging to indigenous population that have been assimilated or historically ignored by the Argentine State and on the other hand immigrant communities that have, in some cases, have a very marked secondary identity and with the passage of time feel like they have a strong bond with their motherland (actual there is a third group of afro-decedents,  people that came as slaves, even though most of them died in conflicts years ago many of them where assimilated into the population to the extent that most people have forgotten of their existence) . The some migrant communities are held in high esteem by the argentines, especially descendants of Europeans that arrived at the beginning of the XX century. This is because these migrants are seen to have made a fundamental contribution to the countries growth and its industrialization. And one must add that these migrants formed part of a fundamental aspect of the historical identity of Argentina: a country of immigrants (I Will explain this better in the next few posts).

One might ask with time will the Bolivian, Paraguayan and Peruvian migrants who are the majority of migrants that come to Argentina now; will they attain the same status that the Europeans have achieved?

Back tracking to the concept of the melting pot in the case of Argentina there is  more accurate concept can be applied to explain how sub-national identities merge with prevailing national identity, it’s the concept of George Stewart, uses the term “transmuting pot”, instead of the “melting pot”, referring process that  migrants have been  historically integrated into United States which has many parallels with the historic process that Argentina went through. With this concept sub-national identities are affected by the national identity and vice versa, and enrich themselves over time.

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