ABSTRACT
Nationalism arouses solidarity and instigates identity politics that generate potentially threatening implications for ethnic and religious minorities. As we see in Chapters 2, 4, 17, 19, and 20, mainstream nationalism marginalizes and threatens those who do not fit the mainstream mold or in some way challenge that imagined community of insiders. The project of defining the mainstream community depends significantly on those outside the imagined boundaries because ‘they’ are not ‘us’, generating a useful tension in forging a national identity that involves political consequences. Those who perceive they are at the fringes of mainstream society, either due to minority status or geographical location, and feel disadvantaged by exclusion from what is embraced within the prevailing mainstream national identity may try to fully assimilate, find a niche within the mainstream, or seek an autonomous identity on the fringes; or a combination of all three coping strategies depending on circumstances.
