Home and Homeland: Once, I Have Been Stateless
The concept of nationality is an illness
I was born in a country that no longer exists: the FRG. Then I lived in a country that no longer exists: Yugoslavia. After that, I moved to a country that was never recognized as a sovereign state: Taiwan. Now, I live in a country that 30-something years ago had a different name, different borders, and a different political ideology: the GDR.
I have two citizenships
My Croatian papers still show my married name, which was Greek. After my divorce, I gave up the Greek name.
To “own” MY current name, both in my homeland Croatia and globally, I would need to start a confusing, time and money-consuming paper war with Zagreb, the Capital of Croatia. I´ll put that on hold until sometime later.
Nationality, along with the conforming paperwork, seems like nonsense to me.
Once, I have been stateless
When Yugoslavia broke apart, it was not that easy to gain Croatian citizenship because I was not a resident. It bothered me — to possibly lose Yugoslavian citizenship and maybe not receive another. Eventually, my parents worked it out for me.
Later, I had to put down the acquired Croatian citizenship. For a couple of weeks, I had no better ID than my driver´s license. I was stateless in a waiting queue to apply for German citizenship. That felt weird, too.
Nationality and local diversities
Homeland is a term that comes up every now and then. Then I wonder how many irrational illusions and faded memories are attached to it.
In my personal history, national states, and their borders, names, and constitutions did not show remarkable stability or soundness.
That is why we could shift our focus away from nationality towards life between cultures and languages and celebrate regional diversity and dialects!
Identity
I get similar results considering the word “identity”. It also seems very plastic and elastic to me, see name changes, marital status, state of birth, and the like. Indeed, none of these is set in stone. And if all of it were set in stone, it could be chiseled further, couldn’t it?
Alice Merton sings this line in her song “No Roots”:
It’s just the place that changes; the rest is still the same.
I can relate to that. Home is either inside me or not at all.
Home is an Inside-Job
I see “home” more as an internal event and less as a nationality thing. After I had a DNA analysis of my origins last year, I feel the term nationality even weirder than ever: DNA from 21 countries and ethnicities supposedly flows through my veins!
Twenty-one!!!
Compared to that, a poor couple of colorful brochures, serving as my identity documents, make up for nothing.
Concerning inner and outer events
Even if you move to another continent — you take your issues and problems, your origins, and your feelings with you — no matter WHERE you live! The new place will not be able to solve your problems.
In the best case, you move to a place where you can relax better and perhaps take better care of yourself. But in the end, you have to do the “work” yourself.
After all, when you finally have your issues resolved, how important do you think nationality or statehood will be to you?
The concept of nationality is an illness
In the meantime, I quite agree with the assessment that “national statehood is the root of all evil”.
For further contemplation on that assessment, I want to drop a couple of keywords so that you can explore it yourself: military expansion, colonialism, territorial annexations, state-building wars, suppression and exploitation of minorities, ethnical cleansing, apartheid, hundreds of thousands drawnings in the Mediterranean Sea, starving and dying in concentration or refugee camps, etc.
Thank you for reading.
If you are interested to read more of my writings, you may read the following one published in The Masterpiece.