Nationality is typically one of the first things that a person will identify with, yet the entire concept of being connected to a certain nation is very fluid. Even in the context of our daily lives, nationality cannot be escaped with 24% of UBC students having international status as of 2015/16 and many domestic students who also have a separate nationality other than/in addition to being Canadian. The highly-influential theorist Max Weber points out that “natio,” the latin root of nationality, has been historically seen as a legal concept (179). As such, the idea of being connected with one nation and then having it taken away is not unusual. Though nationality is seen as being essential in this era of globalization and nation-states, the reality is that it can be stripped away.
Dual-nationality, in particular, is something I want to examine. Today, it is common in heterogeneous immigration states, such as Canada or the United States today, for citizens to identify and belong to multiple nationalities, yet it was shunned upon during past wartimes. With “World War II and the advent of the Cold War, dual nationality came to present the possibility not simply of interstate complication but of actual subversion” (Spiro 1443). For example, this meant in the context of these conflicts, if one was German-American or Russian-American there was an element of distrust among the larger populace simply because of their nationality. There is a sense of allegiance usually thought of when one claims to a nationality— and so when a person’s dual-identities conflict with each other it creates a conundrum.
Japanese internment in both North American countries, in response to the bombing of Pearl Harbor, highlights the trickiness of having the dual identity of being Canadian (or American) and Japanese. In a documentary entitled “A Degree of Justice: Japanese Canadian UBC Students of 1942” a common sentiment was expressed by the former UBC students: Japanese-Canadian are the same as non-Japanese Canadians. Because of their status of being dual nationals, their “Canadian-ness” was stripped away from them. The Japanese nationality overrode the Canadian nationality the students also had. The former students had curfews imposed, they wore badges and men could not be apart of the Canadian Officer Training Corps or the C.O.T.C. The irony among all of this was when one of the male students was asked by his Chinese friend if he wanted to use his badge, saying that the RCMP would not know the difference between a Japanese and Chinese person. This highlights the fluid aspect of nationality and how at a time of strong nationalist sentiment there still was little distinguishing other groups from each other.
A lot has changed since World War II, and nationality today is either as important as ever or not at all depending on how one interprets the world. But one has to always remember: nothing is truly permanent—something as simple as nationality can become the single most important status to identify and discriminate one by.
Works Cited:
McNeill, Laurie, et al. “Reflecting on ‘A Degree of Justice: Japanese Canadian UBC Students of 1942.'” University of British Columbia, 15 Sept. 2017, Vancouver. Lecture.
Spiro, Peter J. “Dual Nationality and the Meaning of Citizenship.” Emory Law Journal 46.4 (1997): 1411-1486.
“UBC Overview & Facts.” Overview and Facts, University of British Columbia, www.ubc.ca/about/facts.html.
Weber, Max. “Essays In Sociology.” Full Text of “From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology”, Internet Archive, archive.org/stream/frommaxweberessa00webe/frommaxweberessa00webe_djvu.txt.
Yoshizawa, Alejandro, director. A Degree of Justice: Japanese Canadian UBC Students of 1942. Youtube, UBC Library, 19 Mar. 2012, www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8jGdYMmwfQ&feature=youtu.be.