Conclusion: The Transformation of Solidarities and Citizenship on the Way from National to Transnational Ties

Abstract

The nation state, above all in its most highly developed form, has founded its internal inclusion on its external exclusiveness, as Rogers Brubaker (1992: 21–34) rightly put it. In a world which changes its character in particular through the extension of economic transactions, interstate agreements, supranational legislation, global regimes, global communications and a global popular culture, as well as a global market for local cultures and a global validity of the Western culture devoted to human rights, economic wealth and a share for everybody in social welfare, the nation state is no longer the single dominant unit of social integration. The nation embodied politically in the nation state and citizenship based on belonging to a nation are no longer the unquestioned expressions of solidarity. In the process of Europeanization and, beyond that, in the process of globalization, social relationships extend more and more beyond the boundaries of nation states and differentiate internally into ever more selective, functionally specific, situatioally and temporarily limited interactions. Neither large-scale organizations of trade unions, employer associations, welfare organizations and churches nor the nation state as such remain the central units of organizing social integration. The clear-cut demarcation between insiders and outsiders, citizens and non-citizens gives way to more finely graded overlapping zones reaching from temporary and permanent residents to naturalized immigrants with double or single citizenship.