ABSTRACT
Nationalism has become so integral a part of life in Europe today that it is virtually impossible not to identify oneself with a nation state: we think of ourselves as Italians, French or English; we have been prepared to fight wars to affirm the independence or rights of our nation against what we regard as the threats of other states or, tragically, other ‘ethnically’ different peoples, such as Serbs, Croats and Bosnian Muslims, Armenians or Azers. To belong to a nation state has become so natural that, on the one hand, almost any people capable of articulating its identity as a nation and its sense of persecution by the existing state demands the right to independence and a territory, while on the other hand nation states build political and legal barriers to exclude all but their own citizens. The passport-in origin a passe-partout issued to protect the travellerhas now become an obligatory document of legal existence, symbol of this dependence of the individual on the nation state, so inconceivable is the concept of ‘statelessness’.
