In the course of the twentieth century the centrifugal forces of decolonization and
globalization eroded frontiers and seemed to threaten the dissolution of national and
cultural identity in supranational spaces of uncertain form (European enlargement),
while the centrifugal forces of resurgent regionalism raised fears of the break-up of the
sovereign body of the nation. The nation-states attempted to fill the identity void by
devising new forms of territorial politics (devolution, shared sovereignty) based on a
reconfiguration of the foundational spaces and places or the reinvention of collective
myths; at the same time, movements of resistance formed around an essentialist rereading
of national space (resurgent nationalisms), while others attempted to find an
alternative sense of collective belonging outside of the national framework (region,
community, network). In an age of hyper-communication, the postmodern diasporas
have become a source of ‘long-distance nationalism’ (Schiller & Fouron 2001).