Over the last few decades, international migration has changed the face of the nation, particularly in the affluent Global North. This demographic change has produced anxiety among ethnic majorities, which has in turn fuelled populist nationalist movements, at times coalescing around forms of white nationalism. As much as the rise of this populist nationalism has captured the attention of both the media and the public, it also obfuscates the existence of another nation, one claimed and narrated by members of ethnic minorities. My paper aims to discuss these voices of these ‘other’ members of the nation, and in particular those of children of migrants, to explore what kind of nation is made present in their narratives. By engaging with a variety of qualitative materials collected as part of my EU-funded research project New Italians (www.newitalians.eu/en), the paper will reflect on the limits and possibilities of the idea of a plural, inclusive nation.

Bio: Marco Antonsich is a Senior Lecturer in Human Geography at the University of Loughborough. His research focuses on how togetherness in diversity is theorized, narrated and lived within contemporary societies, focusing particularly on the idea of everyday nationhood. Funded by various institutions (U.S. National Science Foundation; Italian National Research Council; CIMO-Finland; and the European Commission), his work has appeared in leading academic journals: Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Political Geography, Progress in Human Geography, and Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers among others. His latest project on ‘New Italians – The Remaking of the Nation in the Age of Migration’ is available here: www.newitalians.eu/en. He is the founder and convenor of the Loughborough University Nationalism Network (LUNN) and the lead of the Migrations and Nations theme of the Centre for Research in Communication and Culture (CRCC).

Zoom webinar (for Eventbrite registration: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/new-italians-the-re-making-of-the-nation-in-the-age-of-migration-tickets-186146197287 )

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