Over the last two decades, migration to Chile has increased dramatically. This "new migration" (Martínez 2003) marks a demographic shift away from largely Europeans and Argentineans to the current arrival of migrants from Peru, Bolivia, and Colombia. As in other Latin American nations, previous migratory waves to Chile were often associated with racial improvement via blanquemiento, or whitening, a deliberate move away from bodily, material, and cultural markers of indigeneity. While Chile and these neighboring countries share a common language, history of Spanish colonization, dominant religion, and some cultural traditions, the current arrival of Latin American migrants has prompted emphatic delineation of racial difference. In analyzing current discourses addressing migration, I argue that the new Latin American migratory flow is always understood in the context of historic migrations from Europe. As Latin American migrants settle in Chile, racialization - the practice of making racial distinctions and pairing these distinctions with an accompanying racial hierarchy - profoundly shapes migrant experiences. I argue that migrant racialization emphasizes both the creation of racial others as well as the assertion of a Chilean national sameness. Indeed, this new migratory flow prompts the construction, contestation, and negotiation of Chile's own national racial identity - one that is produced in constant awareness of global racial understandings. My research extends work on migrant racialization by exploring the recurring tension between racial distinction and national self-presentation through three examples: understandings and experiences of migrant domestic labor, migrant use of public space, and the consumption of Peruvian food. Throughout these examples, I chart the ongoing production of migrant visibility and how the discourses, practices, and processes involved illustrate the shifting terrain of Chilean racial understandings.

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This thesis expands the discussion on Iranian national identity into the period of Khatami’s presidency. Within the theoretical and methodological framework of discourse analysis this thesis contends that the multiple constructions of Iranian national identity, which coexist and compete with each other, can be better understood as discourses. The detailed analysis of five discourses of national identity illustrates a complex set of relationships based on the meanings attached to Iran’s Islamic and pre-Islamic identities and how the West is dealt with in the construction of national identity. The first discourse addressed is the Islamist discourse of national identity, which prioritises Iran’s Islamic culture. At the opposite end of the spectrum the Iranist discourse, which is based on the prioritisation of Iran’s pre-Islamic culture, is deconstructed. It is contended that this represents a new indigenous Iranism that is based on a rediscovery of Sasanian Iran as opposed to Achaemenid Iran. Khatami’s discourse is presented as an attempt at a dialogue between Islamism and Iranism. It is argued that the Khatami period is unique in terms of the articulation of national identity because Khatami has combined for the first time ideas, which together form the Islamist-Iranian discourse of national identity, as an official state discourse. These are the combination of Islamic and pre-Islamic culture, the notion of ‘dialogue among civilisations’ and the idea of Islamic democracy. While these three discourses are based on the politicisation of culture, two additional discourses are presented that reject this politicisation. The first is a discourse of civic Iranian national identity and the second is a discourse of cosmopolitan Iranian national identity. It is contended that Khatami and his Islamist-Iranian discourse have allowed the more open articulation, since the establishment of the Islamic Republic, of these constructions of Iranian national identity.

The present study explores the cultural implications associated with the intensive presence of foreign labour in the modern and young UAE, with special focus on the potential impact on the cultural particularities forming national identity.  To this end, the study examines the evolution and reality of multicultural society in the country, in conjunction with multiculturalism ideologies, policies and modes pursued elsewhere. The issue is addressed from contextual, conceptual, empirical and comparative perspectives; thus the study concludes that the de facto multiculturalism experienced in the UAE is rather a complex unique model that should be understood on its own merits.  Inter-related topics including globalization, civilisational dialogue and cultural engagement, as being inseparable from the subject matter, are thoroughly discussed, with relevance to UAE’s context. The key recommendation calls for the need for earnest steps to introduce limits to the scope of tolerance prescribed, implicitly or explicitly, under public policy in order to maintain the continuity of national identity, and consequently contributes to the sustainability of the prevalent co-existence amongst various cultural communities and groups in the country, in line with the open diversified labour-intensive economy. While the present thesis is expected to help initiate discussion on cultural diversity in the UAE, a number of fields have been identified for possible further research on the state of affairs, in particular, potential threats surrounding the local religious and traditional values.

This thesis considers fashion and cinema as crucial embodiments of Yugoslavian culture. As such, it gives a shine to the potential inherent in film costume for the historical analysis of Yugoslavian national identity and its politics. The focus is on the semiotic analysis of costume design in two native films by Emir Kusturica: When Father Was Away on Business and Underground. Social relations are investigated through the lens of a critical theory, with particular interest in questions of gender, violence, and sexuality. Taking the idea from a critical theory - that power constitutes all human relations - this thesis considers dress as a core symbol for performing power in Yugoslavian society.

Historians have shown how, in the last third of the nineteenth century, the language of patriotism and national identity was appropriated by the political right. It has been all too easily assumed that after this they held a monopoly on such language. However, the British left did not give up ideas about patriotism and the nature of Englishness after the revival of socialism in the 18805. Socialism was rather presented as the restoration of an English past lost to industrial capitalism. They therefore argued for a return to 'Merrie England'. Socialists frequently used radical patriotic vocabulary as a tool in their struggles for social transfotmation, particularly in defence of what they saw as traditional English liberties. But some socialists also used ideas of Englishness to legitimate their own form of socialism and to repudiate other forms, such as anarchism, syndicalism and Marxism, as 'foreign'. Central to this was a belief that Parliament stood at the centre of the national history. This Whiggish parliamentary view of history was essentially English, yet many who held it were Scottish, Welsh and Irish, and they played a full role in creating a 'British Socialism' . The First World War dealt a severe blow to radical patriotism. Pro-war sections of the labour movement were brought into the state, and this reinforced their belief in parliamentarism and a consensual patriotism. The anti-war left continued to use radical patriotic language in the early years of the war, for example against the 'foreign yoke' of conscription, but the war degraded patriotism generally and the Russian Revolution gave internationalism a new focus. It also threatened the concept of British Socialism, and the post-war years saw a bitter debate over forms of socialism, when it was argued that Bolshevism was not suited to 'British conditions'. Moderate Labour, convinced that office could only be achieved on terms set by the British Constitution, sought to prove their fitness to govern. This meant concentration on traditional patriotism and the national interest, rather than conceptions of oppositional Englishness. The left of the labolD' movement now looked to soviet Russia rather than the English past as a model for the future socialist society. Hence the hold of radical patriotism on the British left was broken, but that of patriotism was not. It would take another world war to re-unite the two.

The thesis sets out to examine the debate on national identity and immigration in Italy. It analyses whether Italy, in reacting to immigration, is following any classic model of integration of foreign citizens following the example of countries such as Britain and France, or whether it has developed an alternative long-term strategy more adequate to its own situation. It also questions whether the debate on immigration has triggered a discussion on the renegotiation of the meaning of national identity, in order to make it more inclusive of minority identities within the country. The thesis traces the debate as it emerges in the public sphere. It identifies the main actors involved, and analyses the rhetoric used by the leading voices to put forward their respective views and claims. It aims at providing a picture of the discussion within each group as well as investigating the relationship between different actors, their alliances and the dissent they express. The role of three main actors taking part in the discussion is explored in detail, namely Italian intellectuals, the Catholic Church and the Northern League. It addresses their role in shaping public opinion and influencing the state policy-making on immigration. Through the final analysis of Italian legislation, the thesis concludes that Italy is moving towards the construction of a highly exclusive identity, where the idea of integration does not feature.

Doctor of Philosophy(PhD) / Action, agency and protest were notions that seeped through the social and political terrain of 1960s Japan. Opposition to the Vietnam War, disputes in the universities, environmental concerns and anticipation of the US-Japan Security Treaty’s renewal set down for 1970, saw the entire decade engulfed in activism and protest. This thesis explores these sites of activism revealing the disparate character of protest in the 1960s – the often competing tactics and agendas that were manifested within the burgeoning and dynamic cultures of protest. The shifting definitions of protest and the competing ideals that emerged from its various sites of articulation are crucial to our understanding of postwar Japan. Excavating these sites – reading the character of protest and the ideals expressed – exposes the notions of autonomy and activism that underpinned conceptions of the postwar national identity. In the aftermath of the Pacific War intellectuals and activists looked for new forms of political expression, outside the auspices of the state, through which to enact the postwar nation. The identity of postwar Japan was constructed within the spheres of protest and resistance as anti-Vietnam War activists, Beheiren (Betonamu ni Heiwa o! Shimin Rengō), student groups such as Zenkyōtō, and local citizens’ movements negotiated the discursive space of ‘modern Japan.’ Examining the conceptions of political practice and identity that manifested themselves in the protest and resistance of the period, provides insights into the shifting terrain of national identity in the 1960s.

This study examines Anglophone Caribbean national identities to interrogate multiple and varied economies that manage citizens in the interest of economic and social production and/or the policing of national identities. It is particularly concerned with the gendered character of these economies. The formation and preservation of these national identities rely heavily on gender and sexual difference as Anglophone Caribbean national identities are inextricably linked to expressions of Afro-Caribbean masculinity. Thus I analyze novels and cultural representations of Afro-Caribbean masculinity in cricket, calypso and chutney-soca music in Trinidad's carnival. I also examine Afro-Caribbean religions, Revivalism and Rastafarianism, as well as Afro-Caribbean practices of masking. I examine these practices in order to interrogate the reproduction of colonial practices of marginalization and exclusion. These colonial practices, I argue, are inherent in the cultural politics that inform these cultural performances while denying modes of national belonging that refuse dictated performances of national identities. The literary and cultural performances in this project span three epochs in Caribbean history: post emancipation, independence, and post independence to assess the shifting cultural landscapes that shape postcolonial subjectivities. In Sylvia Wynter's The Hills of Hebron and Orlando Patterson's The Children of Sisyphus, I examine sexual economies in which power is negotiated and contested in a struggle to chart the gendered borders of citizenship and production. I then turn to Lakshmi Persaud's For the Love of My Name to analyze violence exacted against ethnically marked national collectives as an instrument of political and economic aggression that disproportionately affects women. My critique of Earl Lovelace's The Dragon Can't Dance and contemporary performances in calypso and chutney-soca carnival competitions, considers how operative traditions seek to govern post-independent cultural politics. By drawing parallels between the formation of Afro and Indo-Trinidadian nationalisms, I argue that these identity formations establish cultural difference while also dictating cultural performances to advance and police national identities. Lastly, I engage Lovelace's Salt, Garfield Ellis' Such as I Have and contemporary discourses concerning cricket performance, remuneration, and women's limited access to cricket. I argue that cricket becomes a cultural commodity in the perpetuation of a regional national identity that is dependent on gender constructs. Thus this study demonstrates how representations of culture can be mobilized to challenge ideologies and political practices of exclusion, marginalize women in the formation and performance of national identities and govern cultural politics.