Beyond the Civic/Ethnic Dilemma: Banal Nationalism and Everyday Border Drawing

This study proposes a new conceptual framework that moves beyond the widely used civic/ethnic dichotomy in nationalism theory by bringing Michael Billig’s concept of banal nationalism into dialogue with the literature on everyday boundary-making. It argues that the so-called “invisible” and routine markers of banal nationalism play a constitutive role in the everyday reproduction of national belonging and in delineating who is counted as inside and who is excluded as outside. Crucially, this process is not static; it is activated and contested through the constant dialectic between everyday border-drawing and the lived reality of border-crossing. Banal nationalism, therefore, is not merely composed of unnoticed symbols, but is deeply intertwined with the quotidian mechanisms of boundary-drawing that shape rights, belonging, and processes of exclusion. In this regard, the study critiques the limitations of the civic/ethnic distinction and introduces a new model (termed “banal boundary-making”) which links banal nationalism to practices of boundary construction and the management of border-crossers across linguistic, affective, material, and administrative dimensions. The aim is to contribute to nationalism theory with a mechanism-oriented approach that transcends the binary of civic versus ethnic nationalism by showing how boundaries are performatively redrawn at the very moment they are crossed.