I've found in my genealogy research, that quite a few of my ancestors had at least three different countries of birth listed on various documents, since on each one, they'd list whatever country that city happened to be in at the time they were filling out that form.

I've also seen that "country of origin" and "nationality" were not at all synonyms in the early twentieth century. I remember finding one passenger manifest for a ship that a relative was on (where he was listed as Austria for country of origin and Hebrew for nationality), where almost nobody on the page had a matching country and nationality. There were Germans from Russia, Magyars from Poland, Slovakians from Hungary, and so on. I once saw a map of Eastern Europe from before WWI, showing which languages were spoken where, and it totally did not correspond to current borders -- German was spoken much further east than it is now, and there were pockets of the minority languages like Czech and Serbian all over the place, before those people got resettled when the ethnic groups that spoke those all languages got their own countries.

Indeed. My parents grew up with at least 6 languages around them.

In much happier news: a friend just called me and said she's willing to admin Hollaback Israel with me! Whoo-hoo!

Hil, that's interesting to me. In immigration stuff, I often start out whatever I'm writing with "X is a citizen and national of [country]" and I can only think of one or two cases where they are different. I'm not 100% sure this is still the same but I *think* Samoans (from American Samoa) were/are US nationals but not citizens. Whereas Puerto Ricans are US citizens but they can't vote in the general election.

Wow, sorry, I didn't mean to spark this kind of a discussion. My embogglement was really more of a "d'oh!" thing than a "who's a racist and/or why" thing.

I mean, you know me...I'm the jester. I don't talk about social injustices...not here. When I get het up about social injustices and whatnot I draw bunny rabbits.

So, uh, yeah. Sorry, guys. I'll stop playing with matches now.

In immigration stuff, I often start out whatever I'm writing with "X is a citizen and national of [country]" and I can only think of one or two cases where they are different.

How does this work with dual citizenship? Would that normally imply dual nationality too?

On a different topic: my poor little man has been suffering from diarrhoea for the last few days, which has led to a nasty case of nappy rash. He's in good spirits, more or less, and not showing signs of dehydration, so we're not too worried; but I was wondering if any of the other parents had any ideas to help him recover faster and be more comfortable until he does.

I believe if you are a citizen, you are also a national.

For dual citizenship, if neither of the two is the US, then I usually go with the one that helps us most or matches the passport they entered on. As an example, an Italian/Venezuelan citizen can enter without a visa (Italians can), so we might go with that as the primary citizenship.

I've also seen that "country of origin" and "nationality" were not at all synonyms in the early twentieth century.

That doesn't surprise me. My grandfather never called himself Russian, even though he immigrated from there in 1912. He insisted he was Ukranian, because that's the language he spoke. And according to him his mother, despite being born in Ukraine, considered herself German. Shocked the hell out of my cousins when they found that out, they'd been saying they were one quarter Ukrainian forever and were very disappointed to have to add the German in there.

He insisted he was Ukranian, because that's the language he spoke.

Just as there's a controversy on what's French/English/German, and on what's Polish/German, there's a controversy on what's Ukranian/Russian (without even mentioning what's Russian/Georgian).

One of my classes in this year is (soon to be was) on genealogy and social structure, and we saw there how the nationality question moved from genealogy of people to genealogy of languages to determine a country's boundaries. In genetic research, btw, we see that there's nothing between racism and genealogy: there's more genetically in common between a Caucasian (nevermind from where) and an Aborigine than to two random people from Africa. In other words, how most people see "race" has nothing to do with scientific reality, and most scientists believe that when it comes to humans, one can't talk about races.

Also, ~ma to Ryan and his parents.

Jessica, I apologize most profusely. I was trying (and quite obviously failing) to lighten up the discussion. I am very sorry that that misguided comment was it for you adn you walked away. I was not trying to imply that your grandparents are at all racist.

Again, I apologize. I would have done sooner, but had fallen asleep and then took a shower. Joe let me know that you had posted.

I can't get too involved in this discussion, as, ever since I met The Girl a few years ago, I've been struggling to sort out my feelings about Israeli social injustices alongside some hateful racism that Jewish people in this country are currently getting that's linked to Israeli policies. It all gets a bit fraught in my house around this subject.

But entering the slightly less fraught discussion: in nationality terms, The Girl is almost as interesting as you get. She's a dual US and Irish citizen, has Swiss domicile, is a British resident and considers herself Israeli (because both her parents are Israeli and her first language is Hebrew). I thought my mixed Irish-British background was interesting until I met her. Now I feel quite dull.

I feel like a lot more people should be like The Girl. Not only because she kicks ass, but because of nationality terms. The more one person will have, maybe then we'll realize how stupid it is to consider and judge a person according to his/hers nationality, and start seeing him/her as a human being.

The moment I saw all of the nationalities and people of colors who came to PHR's free clinic the day I volunteered there, my eyes were opened wide with a huge grin, with only one thought on my mind: "this is what I want to see around me all of the time - that variety of people".