Dual Loyalties

Dual loyalty has formed a political threat in the modern era because difference is only acceptable between national identities and not within them. The modern state sought to instill political loyalties in order to maintain territorial concentrations of power. In doing so, it came into competition with communal centers of loyalty. These ethnic, religious, and regional ties resisted the state's declaration of power and rights as seen among the Aborigines of Australia, the Jews of the diaspora, and the Kurds of southwest Asia. Such expressions of dual loyalty threatened national unity by presenting the image of a divided community.

While many political regimes retain a fear of multiculturalism and attack dual loyalty, this concept of allegiance is becoming superseded by the idea of shared loyalties. The twentieth-century transportation and communication revolutions enabled immigrants to maintain close ties with their countries of origin and maintain multiple cultural identities. The many countries granting dual citizenship recognize the shared loyalties of these immigrants. The challenge for governments is to be able to distinguish between those immigrants who are benign and those who pose a security threat.