Concepts of “The Nation”
and
Our Own Positioning in Everyday Life
In the woodwork room of our school the children lately started producing models of fish. They cut out the body shapes and fins from plywood, and the eyes from branches of elderberry. Some children cut out teeth, others added elements like whiskers or hair, one fish was made as a fish-on-wheels. Eventually they painted the fish, adding colour and scales. The first few were painted in blue and pink. But when I asked Morris what colour he would want his fish to be, he said: Ireland colours, green, white, orange; and when I asked Sasha the same question, he answered: blue and yellow, like Ukraine.
At present in our school we have children who (themselves or whose parents) have passports from Australia, Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, Czech Republic, Estonia, India, Ireland, Italy, Mongolia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Palestine, Poland, Portugal, Somalia, South Africa, Spain, Syria, Ukraine. In the past there were others with passports from Bosnia, France, Germany, Hungary, Iraq, Lebanon, Mauritius, Serbia, Singapore, Slovakia, South Korea, UK, USA, and probably a good few more (I am sure I don’t even remember each and all of them).
Consider this hotchpotch of “nationalities.” There is always a chance that at any given time there are people in our school whose nations are at the time being in war with each other. In other words, (mostly) men of one nation are engaged in killing men, women, children of another nation, which is in fact a good reason for families to leave “their” nation and come to Ireland, where they hope to live a life without the fear of being killed, hurt, raped, abducted, enslaved, their houses bombed out, their fields being burnt and mined.
Many families would love to return to their home countries. Others would happily stay here. Families from EU-countries do not face the problem of precarious status, visa applications, international protection applications. Their “nationality” is protection enough, just as it is for “Irish” families.
Regardless of their residency status, in our school we expect all children to behave in benevolent matter towards each other, and I can safely say, they do. But at the same time, on everyday level they reproduce patterns of “national identification”. They talk about themselves as, e.g. “Polish”, “Syrian”, “Ukrainian”, “Palestinian” or “Irish”, thus reproducing the very dividing lines that if push comes to shove make the difference between being accepted or not, having rights or not, between killing and being killed.
If Jennifer paints her fish in the “Ireland colours” in the week after the St. Patrick’s day parade, we may understand quite well that Jennifer is still under the impression of the parade and we assume she is working through this experience. And if Yuri paints the body of his fish green-white-orange and the fins blue-yellow, we may see Yuri putting into a symbolic form his experience of (at the age of 6) leaving behind his house, garden, friends in Charkiv for an uncertain future in Ireland. But should we not comment on the fatal dangers of society organised along the lines of “nationalities?”
Outside of the confines of schools, we don’t need to think long and we will find that concepts of “the nation” permeate everyday life in manifold ways. Are you born with a “nationality”, like you are born with black, blue, green eyes, or with dark or fair hair? Obviously not. But we note, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child stipulates the right for every child to be “registered immediately after birth” and “to acquire a nationality.”
In thinking about concepts of “the nation”, different experiential and analytical levels intermingle: self-images, identifications, ego-constructions, institutional norms and requirements, meta-levels of geo-political power politics. If it wasn’t for all the seemingly minuscule individual everyday acts of hundreds of thousands of people who reproduce certain patterns of self-identification and of allying themselves, would geo-political power politics be possible in the same way? And yet, are we not all encapsulated by our “national identification?” Isn’t it a somehow homely feeling to hear certain songs in our “native language?” Do we not attach a value to certain features of our “home culture?” Are language and culture not inextricably linked to the nation? Should we not embrace the virtues of “national identification?” And should we not foster such identification in children already?
Our positioning towards concepts of “the nation” is not a topic that is easily settled by a few ready-made answers. At the SSP Summer School 2026 we will take concepts of “the nation” and our positioning in everyday life as a problematic worth of deeper investigation.
If that sounds interesting to you, you may consider participating in the Summer School.
Dates and organisational info here.