What is methodological nationalism?
Defining Methodological Nationalism
Think of immigration. What images come to your mind? If you are leaning toward the left, you might imagine open borders and colourful multiethnic communities, while worrying about the exploitation of migrants. If you are leaning toward the right, you might worry about how the arrival of foreigners could affect your ways of life, or about the impact of immigration on the opportunities available to your fellow co-nationals. But no matter what your political orientation is, you will most probably think of foreigners, of borders, and of states.
These assumptions are a very good example of methodological nationalism. Methodological nationalism is a term that expresses our tendency to adopt the perspective of the nation state, when we are thinking about political questions. We tend to think of the world as divided into nation states, and to think of them as the most relevant units that define our lives. We also tend to think of every individual as belonging to a single state, and to think of cultures as national cultures.
Methodological nationalism shapes the way that we view the world. Under its perspective, immigrants become foreigners, while people living hundreds of kilometers away from us are our compatriots, so long as they live on our side of the border. It is under this perspective that it makes sense to define people who have never lived in another state in their whole lives as immigrants, just because their parents or even grandparents came from someone else - but is this a problem?
Is methodological nationalism bad?
Whether you deem methodological nationalism problematic will partly depend on your broader stance on nationalism. People who deeply care about national belonging and identities will probably endorse methodological nationalism. Others, more skeptical about the role of the nation in our lives, will be more inclined to question these conclusions. But there is an important sense in which blindly endorsing methodological nationalism is problematic even for nationalists.
Methodological nationalism affects the way we view the world. It conceals a whole series of questions that we might ask, and the different answers that we might get, if we switch our focus from the nation to individuals or other units. Think, for example, of the question “What is the cost and benefit of migration?” Usually, scholars try to answer this question assuming that it refers to the cost for the receiving, and sometimes also for the sending states. But we might get very different answers if we ask about the cost and benefit of migration for individuals, for people living in big cities or the countryside, for members of lower social classes and for international elites. The answer to these questions is of interest to everyone, including the nationalists. But we can’t get it if we don’t leave our methodological nationalist assumptions behind.
So, methodological nationalism can block our perspective, prioritizing certain sets of questions and making others disappear. But there’s yet another problem with uncritically adopting its perspective. Methodological nationalism is the basis on which we construct certain identities. If we aren’t conscious of this fact, we assume that these identities are natural, and not a matter of perspective. This can trap us in inflexible viewpoints, and hinder our ability to understand others and communicate with them effectively. Consider again the debate on migration. Under the perspective of methodological nationalism, migration is the movement of people across the borders of nation states. This means that the vast majority of the world’s population is understood as sedentary – international migrants make up around 3,5% of the global population. Most of us will think of ourselves as sedentary, in opposition to “them,” the migrants, the mobile. But this is only part of the story.
There are several small-scale migrations taking place within states, as people move from one place to another in search of a better life. People who have never crossed the borders of their country will have most probably moved somewhere else at least once in their lives. They will have found themselves as strangers in foreign communities. They will have had to learn their surroundings from the beginning; to make new friends; to start anew, carrying in their suitcases some remnants of their previous life. Our identities as migrants or as sedentary are artificial, depending on the scale that we adopt.
Beyond methodological nationalism?
By questioning methodological nationalism, people might realize that they are a little bit like migrants themselves. More importantly, they might realize that, in their movements, they are often motivated by similar motives as those of migrants. We tend to assume that when migrants are refugees, fleeing persecution, they should be allowed to migrate. But when they are moving to improve their life conditions and opportunities, we are less welcoming. It is interesting to ask ourselves how we would feel if someone blamed us for moving to another region to find, for example, better job opportunities. How bad is it to move in search of a better life, and how much of our mobility would we be willing to sacrifice?
This switch of perspective does not mean that people will ultimately reject their adherence to the value of the nation state. Many people will still believe that nations are important. They might also still believe that international migrants shouldn’t have migrated, that they should have stayed in their states of origin. Maybe they will believe that there are crucial differences between international and internal migration, or that there are only so many migrants that a state can accept. Still, thinking out of the box of methodological nationalism means that even nationalists will be able to understand migrants a little bit more; to identify with them a little bit more. It will build a bridge that everyone can choose if and up to where she wants to cross.
Further reading:
Sager, Alex. “Political Philosophy Beyond Methodological Nationalism.” Philosophy compass 16, no. 2 (2021).
