Imagine I am a billionaire. I buy an island, create a state, and begin granting citizenship to people and gathering them together. I call our state Avicennea and our nation Avicenneans. We are very different from each other in facial features, traditions, food, skin color, and religion. Time passes. Four or five centuries pass, and we become similar to each other in many aspects of life as we share marriage, traditions, food, and environment. We are now called the Avicennean nation. As we can see, we have built an entire nation. We were different when we first gathered together, and we gradually “became” similar as time passed. There is no “Avicennean” essence in our blood. It is a social construction and a mutual agreement.
Recently, after exposure to different ideas, I have come to question ethno-nationalism in our daily and political language. Although it has played an essential role throughout human history, I do not think it is necessarily helpful for our unity and social integrity anymore. One might argue that money, laws, and human rights are social constructions, so should we remove them as well? This would be a fair point to raise and I would suggest no. Ethno-nationalism becomes threatening when it disguises the preference or dominance of one ethnicity over another as “preserving nationality,” thereby creating an imagined legitimacy for one ethno-national group over others. In this essay, I will argue why removing exclusionary forms of ethno-nationalism is better for society and why it differs from social constructions such as money and laws.
First, let’s define ethnonationalism. Different sources define it slightly differently even though most of the definitions circle around the same idea. Ethnonationalism is a political ideology that primarily defines the nation through shared ethnicity, ancestry, culture, language, or heritage rather than legal citizenship or civic membership. This is the closest definition to the core meaning of different sources.
What is harmful about this? This idea might seem legitimate on the surface, and I would even say so to some degree. However, the problem starts when the ethnic “authenticity” of legal citizens is questioned, leading to divisions between individuals based on ancestry and ethnicity rather than legal citizenship. This creates first-class and second-class belonging in society. Instead of legal status, ethnicity, ancestry, and appearance become the ways to judge whether an individual is authentic or not. For instance, a Southeast Asian or Western Asian individual might raise doubts from some ethnonationalists when they say, “I am British.” They might be legally British, but their ancestry and ethnicity will still be questioned. The issue here is that legal citizenship becomes less relevant while a vague definition of ethnic nationhood becomes the measure of judgment. This is the real problem I am concerned with.
Therefore, ethno-nationalism weakens equal legal citizenship by making ethnic authenticity the measure of belonging. This raises an important objection: if ethnic nationalism is harmful, and if it is a social construction, then would all social constructions be harmful and should they be removed from society? I would argue no. The problem with ethno-nationalism is not in its nature as a social construction. Social constructions are essential parts of society; in fact, I would even say that they are the core of society that holds it together. For instance, money, laws, and human rights, as given in the thesis example, are also social constructions. I would not say that they are inherently harmful. Instead, I would propose that we should judge social constructions by their social consequences.
Human rights are, for example, social constructions based on mutual agreement between individuals within society, yet they help prevent harm, oppression, and exploitation. This is undoubtedly an important aspect of social constructions that helps us build a better society. However, in the case of ethno-nationalism, the social construction is turned into a hierarchy of legitimacy. It divides individuals according to unstable and exclusionary criteria such as ethnicity and ancestry.
I have suggested that ethno-nationalism is a social construction that is harming society, but social constructions are not inherently harmful. They are evaluated based on the social consequences they produce. Now, the question that one would naturally come to ask is: what is the solution? As it is the nature of socio-political issues, there are many different aspects that contribute to the solution, and this is not a mathematical equation that one would sit and solve in a given amount of time. The solution would involve many consecutive steps implemented one after another.
What I would suggest is changing the language of our politics and media. I think this plays a key role in creating change. How would this work? I would call for deliberately decreasing the usage of certain ethno-nationalistic phrases that judge the ethnic authenticity of citizens and foreigners (foreigners who became naturalized citizens, foreigners who gained citizenship through marriage, and permanent or long-term foreign workers/residents). Instead, I would suggest using terms such as citizen, naturalized citizen, and permanent/temporary legal resident based on their visa types and duration of stay. By doing so, we would reduce the usage of phrases that judge the ethnic authenticity of individuals (“true American,” “native British,” etc.).
By changing our language and decreasing the usage of phrases that judge ethnic authenticity, we would gradually become more aware of how language shapes our perceptions of individuals and their equality. This, in turn, could reduce the creation of first-class and second-class divisions within society and encourage people to treat others more equally. Treating everyone equally allows us to see people with equal dignity and equal political legitimacy regardless of ancestry or ethnic background. This alone cannot solve the issue; however, it could be a solid starting point toward building a more equal and integrated society together.
Nations might emerge naturally through shared experiences and collective life. They are not inherently harmful. They become harmful when they create hierarchical legitimacy based on ancestry and ethnicity. Ethno-nationalism, specifically, weakens society by increasing distrust and social divisions while judging individuals’ authenticity based on their ancestral and ethnic backgrounds. Thus, by challenging such harmful social constructions, we should move toward a more integrated and united society. Unity and belonging in society should come from participation within it rather than ethnic background.
Sources
- Benedict Anderson. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Verso, 1983.
- Ernest Gellner. Nations and Nationalism. Cornell University Press, 1983.
- Rogers Brubaker. Ethnicity Without Groups. Harvard University Press, 2004.
- Michael Billig. Banal Nationalism. SAGE Publications, 1995.
- Henri Tajfel and John C. Turner. “An Integrative Theory of Intergroup Conflict.” In The Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations, 1979.
Seoul, Korea
26/05/2026