Academic debate about the anachronism of national borders is extensive. The general population, however, has been less keen to embrace the idea of a ‘postnational’ world. This paper offers evidence from focus groups with Australians suggesting that in some quarters talking beyond the nation is occurring. However, the ideology of the nation-state remains strong, and such talk is quickly shut down using a particular rhetorical device. This is ‘the principle/practical’ dichotomy, which insists that dropping national borders is impractical for a range of reasons, despite it perhaps being a valuable idea in principle. The paper explores the ways this occurs, using detailed critical discourse analysis. Practical objections are generally framed in terms of governance rather than cultural issues. However, practical examples of existing ‘no borders’ situations are used to make the counter-argument that a postnational world is possible.
Abram, Simone, Bela Feldman Bianco, Shahram Khosravi, N. Salazar, and Nicholas de Genova
2016 “The free movement of people around the world would be Utopian: IUAES World Congress 2013: Evolving Humanity, Emerging Worlds, 5–10 August 2013.” Identities. 1–33.
Anderson, Benedict
1991Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso.
Anderson, Bridget, Nandita Sharma, and Cynthia Wright
2009 “Editorial: Why No Borders?” Refuge: Canada's Journal on Refugees (Special Issue on ‘No Borders as a Practical Political Project’) 261: 5–18.
Appiah, Kwami
2006Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers. New York: Norton.
Audi, Robert
2009 “Nationalism, Cosmopolitanism, and Globalization.” The Journal of Ethics 131: 365–81.
Bartram, David
2010 “International Migration, Open Borders Debates, and Happiness.” International Studies Review 121: 339–61.
Beck, Ulrich
2006Cosmopolitan Vision. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Beck, Ulrich, and Natan Sznaider
2006 “Unpacking Cosmopolitanism for the Social Sciences: A Research Agenda.” British Journal of Sociology 571: 1–23.
Block, Walter
1998 “A Libertarian Case for Free Immigration.” Journal of Libertarian Studies 131: 167–86.
Brett, Judith, and Anthony Moran
2011 “Cosmopolitan Nationalism: Ordinary People Making Sense of Diversity.” Nations and Nationalism 171: 188–206.
Calhoun, Craig
2007Nations Matter: Culture, History, and the Cosmopolitan Dream. London: Routledge.
Carens, Joseph
1987 “Aliens and Citizens: The Case for Open Borders.” The Review of Politics 491: 251–73.
Castles, Stephen, and Alistair Davidson
2000Citizenship and Migration: Globalization and the Politics of Belonging. New York: Routledge.
Dinan, Desmond
1999Ever Closer Union: An Introduction to European Integration. London: Boulder.
Edwards, Derek, and Jonathon Potter
1992Discursive Psychology. London: Sage.
Fairclough, Norman
2013Critical Discourse Analysis: The Critical Study of Language. Abingdon, UK: Routledge.
Fozdar, Farida
2016 “Asian Invisibility/Asian Threat: Australians Talking About Asia” Journal of Sociology 521: 789–805.
Fozdar, Farida
2008 “Duelling Discourses, Shared Weapons: Rhetorical Techniques Used to Challenge Racist Arguments.” Discourse and Society 191: 529–47.
Fozdar, Farida, and Mitchell Low
2015 “ ‘They Have to Abide by Our Laws…and Stuff’: Ethno Nationalism Masquerading as Civic Nationalism.” Nations and Nationalism 211: 524–43.
Fozdar, Farida, and Anne Pedersen
2013 “Diablogging About Asylum Seekers: Building a Counter-Hegemonic Discourse.” Discourse & Communication 71: 1–18.
Gamson, William
1992Talking Politics. New York: Cambridge University Press.
2002The Postnational Self: Belonging and Identity. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press.
Higgins, Peter
2008 “Open Borders and the Right to Immigration.” Human Rights Review 91: 525–35.
Huntington, Samuel
1996The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. India: Penguin Books.
Inglis, David
2013 “Cosmopolitanism’s Sociology and Sociology’s Cosmopolitanism: Re-Telling the History of Cosmopolitan Theory from Stoicism to Durkheim and Beyond.” Distinktion: Scandinavian Journal of Social Theory 151: 69–87.
Jacobs, Keith, and Jeff Malpas
2011Ocean to Outback: Cosmopolitanism in Contemporary Australia. Crawley, Western Australia: UWA Publishing.
Jupp, James
2007From White Australia to Woomera: The Story of Australian Immigration. Melbourne: Cambridge University Press.
Kitzinger, Jenny, and Rosaline Barbour
1999Developing Focus Group Research: Politics, Theory and Practice. London: Sage.
Kohler-Koch, Beate, and Rainer Eising
(eds)1999The Transformation of Governance in the European Union. London: Routledge.
2008 “Analysing Focus Group Discussions.” In Qualitative Discourse Analysis in the Social Sciences, edited by Ruth Wodak, and Michal Krzyzanowski, 162–81. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
Kymlicka, Will
1995Multicultural Citizenship. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lamont, Michele, and Sada Aksartova
2002 “Ordinary Cosmopolitanisms: Strategies for Bridging Racial Boundaries Among Working-Class Men.” Theory, Culture & Society 191: 1–25.
Munday, Jennie
2006 “Identity in Focus: The Use of Focus Groups to Study the Construction of Collective Identity.” Sociology 401: 89–105.
Nussbaum, Martha
1994 “Cosmopolitanism and Patriotism.” Boston Review 191: 3–16.
Pakulski, Jan, and Bruce Tranter
2000 “Civic, National and Denizen Identity in Australia.” Journal of Sociology 361: 205–22.
Phillips, Timothy, and Robert Holton
2007 “What Do Australians Think About Globalisation? Public and Personal Dimensions.” In Australian Social Attitudes 2: Citizenship, Work and Aspirations, edited by David Denemark, Gabrielle Meagher, Shaun Wilson, Mark Western, and Timothy Phillips, 107–24. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press.
Phillips, Timothy, and Philip Smith
2008 “Cosmopolitan Beliefs and Cosmopolitan Practices: An Empirical Investigation.” Journal of Sociology 441: 391–99.
Phillips, Timothy, and Philip Smith
2000 “What is ‘Australian’? Knowledge and Attitudes Among a Gallery of Contemporary Australians.” Australian Journal of Political Science 351: 203–24.
Pickering, Sharon
2001 “Common Sense and Original Deviancy: News Discourses and Asylum Seekers in Australia.” Journal of Refugee Studies 141: 169–86.
Pomerantz, Anita
1986 “Extreme Case Formulations: A Way of Legitimizing Claims.” Human Studies 91: 219–29.
Pomerantz, Anita
1984 “Agreeing and Disagreeing with Assessments: Some Features of Preferred/Dispreferred Turn Shapes.” In Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis, edited by Maxwell Atkinson, and John Heritage, 57–101. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Puchta, Claudia, and Jonathon Potter
2004Focus Group Practice. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage.
Rawls, John
1971A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
Sassen, Saskia
2006Territory Authority Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Sassen, Saskia
1996Losing Control. New York: Columbia University Press.
Schiller, Nina Glick, Linda Basch, and Christina Blanc‐Szanton
(eds)1992 “Transnationalism: A New Analytic Framework for Understanding Migration.” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 6451: 1–24.
Schiller, Nina Glick, and Andrew Irving
2015Whose Cosmopolitanism? Critical Perspectives, Relationalities and Discontents. New York: Berghan.
Skey, Michael
2013 “Why Do Nations Matter? The Struggle for Belonging and Security in an Uncertain World.” The British Journal of Sociology 641: 81–98.
Skrbis, Zlatko, and Ian Woodward
2007 “The Ambivalence of Ordinary Cosmopolitanism: Investigating the Limits of Cosmopolitan Openness.” The Sociological Review 551: 730–47.
Smithson, Janet
2000 “Using and analysing focus groups: limitations and possibilities.” International Journal of Social Research Methodology 31: 103–19.
Soysal, Yasemin
1994Limits of Citizenship: Migrants and Postnational Membership in Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Stokes, Geoffrey, Roderic Pitty, and Gary Smith
(eds)2008Global Citizens: Australian Activists for Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Stone, Dianne
2013Knowledge Networks and Transnational Governance: The Public-Private Policy Nexus in the Global Agora. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Turner, Bryan, Christine Halse, and Arathi Sriprakash
2014 “Cosmopolitanism: Religion and Kinship Among Young People in South-Western Sydney.” Journal of Sociology 501: 83–98.
van den Berg, Harry, Margaret Wetherell, and Hanneke Houtkoop-Steenstra
(eds)2003Analyzing Race Talk: Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Interview. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
van Dijk, Teun
1987Communicating Racism: Ethnic Prejudice in Thought and Talk. California: Sage.
Vertovec, Steve
2001 “Transnationalism and Identity.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 271: 573–82.
Vertovec, Steve, and Robin Cohen
(eds)2002Conceiving Cosmopolitanism: Theory, Context and Practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Walzer, Michael
1981 “The Distribution of Membership”. In Boundaries: National Autonomy and Its Limits, edited by Peter Brown, and Henry Shue, 1–35. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman.
Werbner, Pnina
2008 “Introduction: Towards a New Cosmopolitan Anthropology.” In Anthropology and the New Cosmopolitanism, edited by Pnina Werbner, 1–29. Berg: Oxford.
Werbner, Pnina
1999 “Global Pathways. Working Class Cosmopolitans and the Creation of Transnational Ethnic Worlds.” Social Anthropology 71: 17–35.
Wetherell, Margaret
2003 “Racism and the Analysis of Cultural Resources in Interviews.” In Analyzing Race Talk: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on the Research, edited by Harry van den Berg, Margaret Wetherell, and Hanneke Houtkoop-Steenstra, 11–30. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wetherell, Margaret, and Jonathon Potter
1992Mapping the Language of Racism: Discourse and the Legitimation of Exploitation. Hertfordshire, UK: Harvester-Wheatsheaf.
2001 “What CDA is About: A Summary of Its History, Important Concepts and Its Developments.” In Methods of Critical Discourse Studies, edited by Ruth Wodak, and Michael Meyer, 1–13. London: Sage.
Wodak, Ruth, and Michael Meyer
2001Methods of Critical Discourse Studies. London: Sage.
Wodak, Ruth, and Martin Reisigl
(eds)2009The Discursive Construction of National Identity. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Woodward, Ian, Zlatko Skrbis, and Clive Bean
2008 “Attitudes Towards Globalization and Cosmopolitanism: Cultural Diversity, Personal Consumption and the National Economy.” British Journal of Sociology 591: 207–26.
Cited by
Cited by 5 other publications
Ashcroft, Bill
2019. Borders, Bordering, and the Transnation. English Academy Review 36:1 ► pp. 5 ff.
Fozdar, Farida
2018. Social Transformation and the Individual: Opportunities and Limitations. Journal of Intercultural Studies 39:2 ► pp. 129 ff.
Fozdar, Farida
2018. Buying the Nation and Beyond: Discursive Dilemmas in Debates around Cosmopolitan Consumption. In Cosmopolitanism, Markets, and Consumption, ► pp. 239 ff.
Fozdar, Farida
2021. Re-imagining the world: Australians’ engagement with postnationalism, or Why the nation is the problem. Journal of Sociology 57:1 ► pp. 146 ff.
Moran, Anthony
2021. Globalisation, postnationalism and Australia. Journal of Sociology 57:1 ► pp. 128 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 2 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.