Difference Between Ethnicity and Nationality
Ethnicity vs Nationality
Where nationality means one’s country of origin, ethnicity refers to racial ancestry.
To make it clearer, a person born in India and living in the US, will only have an Indian nationality, and not an American nationality. If a person from an Italian family was born in Greece, then that person would have an Italian ethnicity, and not a Greek ethnicity.
Nationality is a word that pertains to the state of origin. Nationality can be defined as the relationship between a person and his or her state of origin. Nationality also means that a person has the protection of the state where he or she was born.
Ethnicity can be defined as a group of people who regard themselves to be different from others. The ethnic groups are united by common traditional, cultural, linguistic, ritualistic, behavioral and religious traits. On the other hand, nationality does not pertain to these characteristics, as one can come across people that have different cultural, traditional, ritualistic and religious traits living in the same country.
Nationality also causes patriotism. On the other hand, ethnicity does not create a thought of patriotism, but only creates thoughts of racism. Ethnicity is related only to a particular race, and nothing else. Nowadays, ethnicity is not widely used, as it did have a very adverse impact on the world.
While nationality can be termed as a legal concept, ethnicity can be termed as a cultural concept.
Summary
1. Nationality means one’s country of origin. On the other hand, ethnicity refers to racial ancestry.
2. Nationality can be termed as the relationship between a person and his or her state of origin, whereas ethnicity can be defined as a group of people who are united by common traditional, cultural, linguistic, ritualistic, behavioural and religious traits.
3. While nationality can be termed as a legal concept, ethnicity can be termed as a cultural concept.
4. Nationality also causes patriotism. On the other hand, ethnicity does not create a thought of patriotism, but only creates thoughts of racism.
Search DifferenceBetween.net :
(16 votes, average: 2.88 out of 5)
Loading ...
Email This Post
: If you like this article or our site. Please spread the word. Share it with your friends/family.
6 Comments
Leave a Response
Excellent article with one exception. Ethnicity is your racial ancestry. One can prove his/her ethnicity by taking a DNA test. Ethnicity does not create thoughts of racism. Ethnicity would only create thoughts of heritage whether prideful or shameful, depending on how the person feels about it.
Racists thoughts forming out of a discussion of someone’s heritage would only occur if someone felt racist toward the person of that heritage or the person speaking of his/her heritage were racist; but still not created by ethnicity.
It is also worth noting that ethnicity is not “made up” or stated by someone seeking to be “unique.” Ethnicity is real and you cannot deny where you come from. Your blood runs deeper than your nationality or DNA would not prove any such thing. It is your make up and should be accepted with pride. Do not deny your ancestors.
Debatable. The growth and upbringing of a child runs deeper than blood. We are ALL different from one another because we live different experiences and understand from such experiences.
Ethnicity is better understood when described as “ethnic background” or “ethnic heritage”, because ethnicity is the combination of what your parents gave you. Ethnicity is a combination of both your cultural traditions and your biological “race”.
Ethnicity is a good word to use to avoid using the controversial word “race”. Many anthropologists believe that there are no “races”, only clines of phenotypes.
Thank you.
“To make it clearer, a person born in India and living in the US, will only have an Indian nationality, and not an American nationality”
This is not true at all, if that person becomes a US citizen his nationality changes to US. Ethnicity can’t be changed however. Nationality pretty much means citizenship.
As ethicity is membership of a group then one must be accepted by the group as part of that group.
Therefore an Indian or African can consider himself as English but unless the English group consider him part of the group then he isnt.
As for ethnicity being an identity then if non English person meets your Indian and thinks he is Indian then how can your Indian claim to be English?