In the modern world, the question is rather acute: "Is nationality a political, social or biological concept?" Before talking about nationality, you should familiarize yourself with the accompanying terms.
People. Ethnos. Nation
People - "a new kind", "born kind" of people united by one common territory - a fundamental concept in our topic. From the definition it is clear that this is an exclusively biological term - people who are closely related.
Ethnicity is a people, that is, over time, a group of people formed from close peoples who have one language (belong to the same language group) and a common origin, roots, but are not territorially connected.
A nation is a people with its own common history of development, culture and customs. If one people creates its own national state, it will be called a nation. Thus, this is already a more aggressive, political concept. A nation may include several closely related national groups.
Nationality is…
Nationality refers to any nation on biological grounds. It has no connection with a country or a specific territory. For example, Germans, Kazakhs or Englishmen who live permanently in Russia - their nationality remains the same with a change of place of residence, state. Without nationality (characteristic of kinship between people) there will be no development of the people, it will not become a nation.
Now almost all states are multinational, although there are still separate national republics.
It is important not to confuse citizenship and nationality. The first concept is social, which means the society of which country an individual belongs to. The second, as can be seen from the definition, is biological and shows who a person is by birth, origin.
Although in some countries the word "nationality" is still a definition of the nationality of an individual.
People's nationality
The people is the smallest unit in today's discussion, you can literally take this word as a kind, a family. In the course of their development, families (tribes) grew, divided, and united with their neighbors. But since they had common roots, and life took place in interaction with each other, territorial proximity, common, similar features gradually formed, so strong genetically that they were (are) transmitted to descendants regardless of time and distance - the nationality of peoples or folk nationality.
So, if you look at the Germans, for example: non-Saxon Germans, Franconians, Saxons,Swabians, Bavarians - that's how many sub-ethnoses (peoples) belong to the same nationality of people.
Russians have about thirty ethnic groups throughout Russia and beyond. And there are only two dialects - North Russian (Okaya) and South Russian (Akaya).
How to determine nationality
It would seem that something is easier. He lives in Germany, dad is German, mom is German, he is also German! But the path of mankind on Earth is already quite long. Everything is mixed up - peoples, ethnic groups, nations … It is very difficult to determine a person's belonging to a particular nationality. Especially when dad has Poles and Jews in his family, and mom has Spaniards and Finns, and everyone lives in Australia.
There are still several ways:
- Nationality the child receives from the father. The father is from his father, and thus a fairly clear family (national) line is built. This happens almost all over the world, except for a few nations. Among the Jews, for example, the child takes the nationality of the mother.
- Some folk groups have very bright, similar external signs. Body structure or character traits. According to such signs, a person is classified as a particular nationality.
- People who do not have the opportunity to know the nationality of their ancestors (orphans, for example), take or accept in the process of upbringing, growing up, the features of the national group with which they interact the most (foster parents or orphanage workers).
- The most basic way has two interrelated processes of definition - subjective andobjective. The first is what nationality a person refers to: what traditions he observes, what features of appearance and character he has, what language he is a native speaker. The second is how his relatives perceive him. That is, whether people of the chosen national group identify this person with themselves. Thus, nationality is a personal consciousness and surrounding agreement that a person belongs (is related) to some group of people (peoples, ethnic groups).
