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Citizenship tests are designed to ensure that new citizens have the knowledge required for successful 'integration'. This article explores what those who have taken the test thought about its content. It argues that new citizens had high levels of awareness of debates about immigration and anti-immigration sentiment. Considering new citizens' views of the test, the article shows how many of them are aware of the role of the test in reassuring existing citizens of their fitness to be citizens. However, some new citizens contest this positioning in 'acts of citizenship' where they assert claims to citizenship which are not necessarily those constructed by the state and implied in the tests. The article will argue that the tests and the nature of the knowledge required to pass them serve to retain new citizens in a position of less-than-equal citizenship which is at risk of being discursively (if less often legally) revoked. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rise of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) has been one of the most dramatic and widely discussed features of British politics in recent years. This article argues that one vital but largely overlooked facet of this phenomenon has been the politics of national identity. It argues that despite UKIP's ostensibly unionist stance, Englishness is an important pivot around which key elements of the party's appeal revolve, notably in terms of its Euroscepticism, its opposition to immigration and its anti-establishment narrative. It argues that the Anglo-Britishness promulgated by UKIP allows space for the celebration of English identity rather more easily than of other substate national identities, as it does not challenge the legitimacy of the UK state, which is itself seen as the expression of Anglo-British identity and sovereignty. Scottish nationalism, on the other hand, is seen as a threat to the Union and therefore anti-English. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates whether European identity is a feasible and functional alternative to national identity. We examine the extent, determinants and consequences of national and European identification among (immigrant) Turkish and native Belgian pupils, with data gathered from 1629 pupils across 68 Belgian schools. The results show that immigrant Turkish pupils identify more strongly with Europe than with Belgium. The groups are closer to each other with respect to their European identification, while the latter is not in conflict with national identification. Moreover, European identity is less ethnically and more civically defined than national identity. Importantly, European identification was moderately related to academic achievement, though it is hard to make a causal claim. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study attempted to reexamine the traditional East/ethnic-West/civic framework of national identity by extending the analysis to selected Asian countries. The previous literature has been Western oriented because the comparison and analysis focused on Western Europe and the United States of America (USA) as depicting West/civic societies and Eastern Europe as East/ethnic societies. There is a need to expand the analysis by including Asian countries. Utilizing the 2005-2007 rounds of the World Values Survey, the results of the data analysis support the ethnic-civic dichotomy. On average, respondents from Asian countries (China, Taiwan and South Korea) accorded more weight to the ethnic dimension of national identity and less to the civic, while those from Western countries (USA, Norway and Sweden) attached more importance to the civic dimension than the ethnic. Furthermore, both ethnic and civic identities were largely irrelevant in explaining attitudes toward immigrants in Asian countries but were strongly associated with immigration attitudes in Western countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the reasons behind the expression of anti-English sentiment by Scots in relation to both sporting and wider social contexts, whilst also considering the impact of migration to England on the attitudes expressed by members of the Scottish diaspora. Drawing upon the conceptual framework of ‘narrative identity’ proposed elsewhere, data was generated through semi-structured interviews which focused upon the ‘ontological’ and ‘public’ narratives of Scottish identity as expressed by Scots living in England. The findings demonstrate the influence of a wide range of personal, social, historical and political factors in highlighting the cleavage between Scotland and England within the context of sport and society, allowing for a more nuanced understanding of the complex relationship between these two nations in the context of sporting rivalry. This relationship is argued to be heavily influenced by the existence of an ‘underdog mentality’-style grand ‘public narrative’ for Scots in relation to their English neighbours, based on perceived differences in economic and sporting resources between the two countries. This ‘underdog mentality’ therefore acts as a legitimating force for the expression of anti-English sentiment in both a sporting and wider social context as part of some individuals’ ‘ontological narrative’, although the extent of such sentiment was found to vary significantly between individuals and contrasting contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article, based on a study carried out in Manchester between 2005 and 2008, contrasts two approaches toward national identity construction expressed by two distinct groups of Polish migrants to the UK; one leads to a strong modern national identity and the other produces a more recent postmodern identity. In both cases, I highlight the constant reproduction of national identity in everyday life and the distinct spatial contexts within which this takes place, and further discuss how national identity has evolved from a primarily collective experience to an individual one, along with the consequences of this transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article uses a survey experiment embedded in the 2008 CCES national sample to assess how the public responds to immigrant-rights protests and to determine whether symbolic representations of national identity can serve to “prime” attitudes about immigrants and immigration policy. Based on social identity theory, the common in-group identity model, we expect responses to protesters waving American flags as a display of loyalty should be less hostile than responses to protesters waving Mexican flags. Our experiment demonstrates evidence in favor of this proposition but shows no impact of how protesters were framed on immigration policy preferences. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Arguing for the merits of an antipodean perspective that embraces the linked historical and current relations between Tasman, British and other worlds, this paper focuses on the majoritarian responses of those of English ancestry in Britain and within the British diaspora to wide ranging changes that potentially challenge their national supremacy in both contexts. After briefly assessing some of the approaches to exploring the identities of the 'English/British' separately in Australia and New Zealand, some suggestions are made about how majoritarian narratives are best reframed, conceptually and methodologically, both within the antipodes and the broader contexts within which they have always been placed. The adoption of an antipodean perspective is deemed necessary in order to understand how changes in majority status and shifts in national identity are mutually constituted within and across the above worlds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]