Building states without building nations: understanding urban citizenship in Dili, Timor Leste

Abstract

State and nation building, although often used interchangeably in international relations policy and literature, are in fact two distinct, although closely intertwined, processes: the (re)cons-truction of a state cannot be reduced to a technical exercise, that is, state building; rather, it needs to focus just as significantly on the (re)construction of the country’s social fabric in order to develop the sense of citizenship upon which its sovereignty and legitimacy rest, that is, nation building. This research note introduces urban spaces as interesting contexts to explore the relationship between state and nation building, arguing that their diversity is both a challenge and an opportunity for the state to create a sense of citizenship amongst its population. The case of Dili, the capital of Timor Leste, where a violent past and rapid urbanisation have combined to shape extremely diverse social, political and economic urban spaces, is used here to explore how the population of three case study areas perceives the impact of state policies and to question how these perceptions influence the scales at which people build their identity as well as how these scales affect the construction of local, urban or national citizenship in Timor Leste.

Keywords

• Nation Building
• State Building
• Citizenship
• Urban Space
• Timor-Leste