Where the heart is: Liberal nationalism, social trust, and multiple national belongings

This chapter offers an internal critique of liberal nationalism as a normative political theory. It argues that, even in its most inclusive form, liberal nationalism cannot accommodate individuals belonging to more than one nation. Drawing on the philosophical literature on social trust, the chapter reconstructs the case for national identity as the basis for trust in a wide scale, anonymous society. Liberal nationalists appeal to cultural conceptions of national identity to avoid the exclusionary implications of the civic and ethnic conceptions, but this move comes at a cost for the political equality of multinational individuals. Using cultural markers as evidence for trustworthiness, trust in multinational individuals remains conditional and uncertain, rendering their status as citizens unequal. With its implicit assumption that each individual belongs to only one nation, this chapter argues that liberal nationalism is ill-equipped for the social and political reality of multinational belongings.