Everyday nationalism in individualised political practices. Young left-wing Basque nationalists experiencing the nation in changing times

Abstract

This article is based on a qualitative case study focusing on the ways in which young left-wing nationalists in the Basque Country experience the nation in different areas of their lives, outside of political organisations. The analysis shows, on the one hand, the emergence of individualisation processes of youth practices in the current project of reconstruction and reformulation of left-wing Basque nationalism and the incorporation of these practices into everyday life. On the other hand, it confirms the diversification of meanings attributed to the nation, which runs parallel to the inclusion of global political agendas of the contemporary social movements in this current of nationalism, and the plurality of interests and positions which the different young nationalists use to assert their agency.

The context. The decline of the contentious mobilisation cycle of the Basque nationalist left after armed violence

The following text aims to analyse the various different ways in which some young people affiliated with the nationalist left experience the nation on a daily basis in the new post-ETA political cycle. It will consider both the influence of the Basque political scene – following the weakening of contentious activism – and some political transformations in the global context, which increasingly sees a progressively individualised youth political culture.

A case study always refers to a “here and now” that only makes sense within a historical context. Since the 1980s, the part of the Basque Country that sits within the Spanish state – Hegoalde – has been the scene of a cycle of nationalist mobilisation. This mobilisation strategy has been led by a conglomerate of political organisations and social movements from the nationalist left, linked to the armed organisation ETA, which ceased its activity in 2011 and was formally dissolved in 2018. The political forces of the Basque nationalist left had their origins in the 1960s, in the anti-Franco struggle in Spain, the decolonisation processes in countries of the global south, and the rise of neo-Marxist political currents and new social movements. Their emergence brought with it a redefinition of the nation and Basque national identity: the integration of values associated with the Basque working class into the national struggle and the adoption of the Basque language and culture as distinctive elements of identity.

A network of community organisations, and social movements, including the nationalist unions (Etxebarria et al., 2025) have participated in the post-Franco mobilisation strategy, albeit at different times and to different degrees, with successive fractures caused primarily by the armed activity. This strategy was initially characterised by a desire to break with the autonomous order deriving from the Spanish Constitution, by the fusion of the struggle for independence with the social struggle into the same political project, and, gradually, by the incorporation of alternative values and practices from global social movements such as feminism and environmentalism. In the 2010s, the delegitimisation and disappearance of ETA, the impact of globalisation and its challenges, and the experience of the referendums in Scotland and Catalonia opened up avenues for a transition by the nationalist left to embracing democratic pathways towards secession and the virtual construction of a Basque state.

In recent years, various local and global events have triggered a shift in the political framework in the Basque Country. On the one hand there is the crisis in the political path of the governing Christian-Democratic nationalists of PNV − Basque Nationalist Party − in the Basque Autonomous Community, reflected initially by the Great Economic Recession of 2008 and subsequently by the COVID-19 pandemic, which highlighted the shortcomings of the Basque public system (healthcare, education, housing, etc.) and the exhaustion of the autonomous model due to the failure of successive Spanish governments to transfer powers. On the other hand there is the disappearance of ETA and the reformulation of the nationalist left, shifting from a policy of mobilisation and confrontation towards integration with municipal, regional, and state institutions and a tacit acceptance of the rules of the game in the current political system, which has turned the nationalist left into the direct electoral competitor of conservative nationalism.

The participation of the left-wing coalition Euskal Herria Bildu, which acts as a parent political force in regional and state institutions, has given rise to certain tensions between the practices of the increasingly centralised and bureaucratised political organisation and the grassroots movements, as well as the demobilisation of youth organisations, the emergence of a political dissident youth organization, and the attenuation of the systems of conflictive collective politics that were spearheaded by young people in the recent past, repertoires that included street fighting or kale borroka, demonstrations, clashes with the police and low-intensity violence.

However, the makeup of this coalition is new, and non-nationalist left-wing forces are participating for the first time in favour of the right to self-determination. This initiative is part of the discursive reformulation of the nationalist left developed over the last decade, and two elements stand out. On the one hand, the discourse about the strategies to be followed is framed in terms of democracy and democratic rights. In this way, the uniqueness of the nation loses discursive centrality when faced with the demand for the democratic rights needed by all political communities – in the sense of demos – so that they can freely decide their future, beyond their national identity (Odriozola et al., 2020).

On the other hand, the term nation has been replaced by the concept of sovereignty, a multidimensional and protean term associated with power relations, which has been adapted to changing historical frameworks (Conversi, 2020) and which has been taken on by this nationalist movement. The coalition currently defines itself as pro-sovereignty and pro-independence. The fact that sovereignty can be interpreted at various levels (personal, cultural, political) and with different meanings within the same signifier has allowed a multitude of actors to reinterpret its meanings from their social perspectives, uniting under the same conceptual framework of sovereignty. Thus, beyond national sovereignty and the right to decide, references to activist agendas specific to contemporary social movements have been integrated into both the coalition’s organisational documents and the work of intellectuals close to the movement, for example, in terms of the construction of feminist sovereignty, economic, social, and transformative sovereignty, cultural and linguistic sovereignty, food sovereignty, small-scale agricultural sovereignty, and digital sovereignty. The prominence of feminism is highlighted, due to the strength the feminist movement has acquired in Basque society. Ernai, the strongest youth political organisation on the nationalist left after its refounding, declares itself a pro-independence, socialist, and feminist organisation.

This scenario will serve as the starting point for the study of everyday nationalism (EN, hereafter). As until now EN and banal nationalism have focused especially on settled political contexts (Bonikowski, 2016), the most urgent challenges in this field are twofold, in the opinion of Goode (2020). First, to develop a clearer understanding of their relationship with contentious forms of nationalism. The second, with which Skey and Antonsich (2017) also agree, include the incidence of global phenomena in the approach. This article aims to take into consideration both aspects for discussion, starting with the contextual situation described, and focusing on the changes produced in the strategy of left nationalism in the Basque Country.

Methodology

This study focuses on the ways in which a specific social group, disaggregated within the conglomerate that constitutes “ordinary people” – in this case, young people from the Basque nationalist left – can creatively, adaptively, and consciously (re)construct the nation and attribute new meanings to it in a changing political landscape. It is based on a broader qualitative study carried out among 72 young people in Hegoalde regarding their political learning and practices following the end of armed violence. Participants were informed about the research objectives and the mechanisms followed to ensure data protection during the research process.

For the purposes of this article, we considered an intentional sample of 25 young people and young adults between the ages of 18 and 35. The criterion for choosing this sample was the practice of multiactivism, that is, simultaneous participation in the organisational and informal areas of the nationalist left as well as in other sectoral social movements in the present or in the past. The broad age range chosen was intended to include narratives from people whose political learning and practices developed both before and immediately after the end of ETA’s armed activity. The data collection technique was in-depth interviews, which lasted from one and a half to 2 h, and attempted to capture these young people’s life experience. The semi-structured interviews focused on four thematic sections: (1) early nationalist political socialisation and the acquisition of the nationalist habitus in the family, community, and school settings; (2) early life itineraries among peers and understanding of initial forms of activist engagement; (3) perceptions of national identity and the meanings attributed to the nation; (4) the various practical manifestations of nationalist activism, both collective and individual.

What all these young participants have in common is the fact that they were socialised from a very early age in spheres within the same political universe of the nationalist left and have participated in these spheres in the past or currently. This highly diverse political space is made up, on the one hand, of a large constellation of formal entities – youth, student, and union political organisations. On the other hand, it encompasses a wide variety of constantly changing informal spaces, movements, and popular and community initiatives of a political, cultural, social, and economic nature, as well as gaztetxes (self-managed youth centres), local youth assemblies, spaces occupied by squatters, etc., which constitute the community base of the nationalist left. The young people interviewed possess a high level of education and significant political capital derived from their early initiation into politics and accumulated experience.

The intentional sampling took into account factors considered relevant to ensure a diversity of viewpoints. Participants were selected from different organisations and movements and with different sociodemographic characteristics, such as sex/gender, the demographic weight of the territorial area where they live, urban/rural kinship, language of communication, and type of school attended. In the sample of selected participants, 12 identify as women, 12 as men, and 1 as non-binary. They come from the different territories of Hegoalde: 10 interviews were conducted in Bizkaia, nine in Gipuzkoa, four in Navarre, and two in Alava. In terms of language, 21 interviews were conducted in Basque and four in Spanish.

Taking into account the objective stated in the introductory section, the starting point of the analysis presented below is summarised in two hypotheses that will be studied based on the discourse produced in the interviews: (1) the emergence of individualised youth political practices in the project of national (re)construction, and their progressive incorporation into daily life as a process of adaptation to the new post-ETA Basque scenario; (2) the diversification of meanings attributed to the nation and Basque national identity, parallel to the integration of the global political agendas of social movements.

Everyday nationalism and political individualisation in young people

According to Helled and Pala (2025), one of the characteristics of the nation and nationalism is their permanence over time. The adaptive plasticity of nationalism has also been pointed out by authors such as Conversi (2020), who underscores the changing historical trajectory of the concept of sovereignty in nationalism.

Resilience is a property based on the national habitus, which is often transmitted by the family from early childhood onward, in a context of unnoticed nationalism (Delmotte and Duchesne, 2024). Bourdieu’s concept is that habitus is a set of dispositions incorporated and shared by individuals in a group in their process of socialisation, which correspond to the objective social structures that generated them. These cognitive elements associated with social regularities are translated into individual and collective practices that function within a shared common sense (Bourdieu, 1990). However, in periods of change or crisis in structural conditions, there is a breakdown in this shared sense of the world and, consequently, a mismatch in the inherited habitus, a sort of disarticulation between the practices incorporated by individuals or social groups and the social or political conditions. In these volatile periods of hysteresis, instances of mismatch can generate greater awareness, which allows individuals to become agents capable of questioning the normativity implicit in the habitus – that which has been taken for granted until then – and consciously and strategically adapt to new conditions (Bourdieu, 1990, 2000). Specifically, national resilience indicates the set of dispositions that social agents can implement to (re)generate attachment to a national community both in routine contexts and in contexts of change (Helled and Pala, 2025).

One manifestation of routine persistence is the national reproduction known as banal nationalism (Billig, 1995). Research on everyday nationalism in recent decades cannot be understood without the seminal contribution of Michael Billig (1995), who transformed the study of the field of nationalism by recognising that nationalism can be an unnoticed facet of everyday life, devoid of citizen agency.

Although influenced by this turn, the approach that today is known as “everyday nationalism” focuses mainly on the way in which ordinary people reproduce or actively challenge the nation through ordinary everyday practices (Fox and Miller-Idriss, 2008; Goode, 2020). In fact, this vision is part of a critical reading of Billig’s notion of nation. In first place, unlike Billig’s internally homogenous and defined-as-singular nation, the new revisions have put the emphasis on the ethnic, racial and religious diversity of nations (Fox, 2017; Hearn and Antonsich, 2018; Skey, 2009). Secondly, compared with the idea of a stable state-based nation, in which people are passive consumers of subliminal messages directed from top to bottom, these new ideas cover plural understandings of the nation. This, far from constituting a unified environment, is also considered the product of daily contestation and disagreement, so that we are faced with dynamic, ambiguous processes made up of multiple ordinary voices in conflict (Antonsich, 2020; Brubaker, 2006; Edensor, 2020; Fox and Miller-Idriss, 2008; Goode, 2020; Skey, 2009). Finally, along with the reproductive capacity of the nation by the leading elites, recent approaches have begun to focus on the social practices through which ordinary people recreate the nation in the routines and habits of everyday life (Goode and Stroup, 2015; Vucetic and Hopf, 2020).

Since Fox and Miller-Idriss (2008) proposed a research agenda within these parameters, recent studies on EN have oriented the focus of this academic field towards the analysis of nationalism, which is no longer seen only as a political project, but also as a cognitive, affective and discursive category that appears in daily practice (Bonikowski, 2016). In the opinion of some authors, the research programme should not propose the existence of an exclusive binomial banal nationalism/everyday nationalism (Fox, 2017; Fox, in Uzun and Dede, 2022), but intersections and relations of complementarity between both approaches. As Goode (2020) points out, EN and banal nationalism appear as if they were two sides of the same coin: the nationalism that we see in social practices is recognised as everyday, while the omnipresent and unnoticed nationalism that persists in the background is treated as banal.

In order to overcome the ambiguities generated by the concept of “the everyday”, Goode (2020) identifies three central dimensions that help to limit and define EN: (a) the nature of the agents who, in terms of social status, are considered non-elites or “ordinary people”, (b) the contexts within which they exercise their agency, that is to say, routine, informal action and (c) the scale of the observed social interaction, in terms of practices instead of social structures.

The question of the demarcation of EN refers us to classic questions in the social sciences such as the different manifestations of agency, the context of the exercise of this agency – at macro- and micro-social levels – and the question of reproduction and change, with their consequent potential conflict. According to Fox and Van Ginderachter (2018), top-down perspectives that give more importance to great structural forces to explain the emergence and maintenance of modern nations are complemented by a bottom-up analysis of the daily practices, modes and habits that reproduce the nation in daily life. In this sense, they assert that “the masses” are not (only) receptacles for nationalist messages, but (also) active agents in their consumption, production, appropriation and manipulation of their own particular versions of the nation. In this way, they conclude, ordinary people think about the nation, interpret the nation, consume the nation and sometimes reject, resist, ignore and avoid the nation. As a result, these practices contribute to the reproduction and legitimisation, or to the dismantling and weakening of national forms of belonging.

Moreover, these practices are constructed and developed within a framework of meanings. According to Hearn and Antonsich (2018), the EN can be defined by the objective of studying the acts of creation of meaning by agency. This agency manifests itself in multiple ways in everyday life: in the field of work, consumption, leisure, food and sport. Precisely by focusing on these spaces, the EN approach seeks to understand the meaning that nations acquire for ordinary people and the meanings that people attribute to them in their daily lives (Hearn and Antonsich, 2018).

The act of foregrounding common-sense practices and components of the population shows a clear inclination of EN analyses towards social constructivism (Vucetic and Hopf, 2020). Nevertheless, some authors warn against the danger of keeping macrostructural approaches separate from the micro-investigation of everyday life, and of opposing agency and institution. Accordingly, Hearn and Antonsich (2018) consider that individual agency must be studied in relation to organisational and institutional contexts, and the structural processes it is part of.

Therefore, the study of national practices based on routine and common sense cannot ignore the need for nationalists to adapt to the systemic changes that characterise contemporary societies. Along these lines, today’s experiences of EN cannot be separated from the structural processes of individualisation that drive individuals to construct their lives within the realm of everyday life. Indeed, social and political practices – especially those of young people – are influenced by the cultural processes of individualisation of late modernity. The impact of global neoliberal economic policies, whose influence has increasingly imposed itself on the political sphere, the growing inability of political parties to perform their functions of mediation between citizens and political systems (Mair, 2013), as well as the resulting lack of legitimacy of these systems (Castells, 2019), have been decisive factors in the development of this process. The confluence of these currents contributes to a permanent resizing of the previous boundaries between the political and the social, which is reflected in the daily lives of the population. (Bauman, 2001; Beck, 1996; Beck and Beck-Gersheim, 2002; Furlong and Cartmel, 2007).

These processes of individualisation cause changes in what Beck and Beck-Gersheim call self-politics and what Giddens calls life-politics (1991). Both are models of action that appear as a response to the increasingly restricted options for democratic agency in the face of neoliberal capitalism and in the face of the participatory closure of liberal democratic systems. In these circumstances, young people are attempting to open up spaces – physical, virtual, social, and political – to activate a broader type of citizenship (Cuzzocrea and Collins, 2015; Larrinaga et al., 2023; Stolle et al., 2008) and anticipate new social models through creative individualised practices (Larrinaga et al., 2025; Reedy et al., 2016). Consequently, forms of politicisation of leisure, consumption, employment, digital activity, and other aspects of everyday life have increased, allowing them to affirm young people’s agency and self-realisation (Kyroglou and Henn, 2017). Consequently, there has been an emergence in Western political systems of individualised commitments related to ways of life that were previously considered “non-political”. These individualised practices reflect a progressive migration towards new niches of activity and identity situated in a liminal space between the personal, the social, and the political. As a result, these spaces are also connected to the most ordinary ways of experiencing nationality in everyday life.

However, although young contemporaries share the influence exerted by the aforementioned structural processes, these processes do not affect all of them in the same way. The intersectional perspective reveals the complex ways in which inequalities of gender, class, or nationality interact to shape individuals’ social opportunities and constraints regarding social positions in terms of political power and resources (Atewologun, 2018; Banks, 2021). Furthermore, various youth groups are also constrained by the political traditions and institutional formations of their particular time and place. These factors determine the dispositions or habitus necessary to act as political agents.

In the case of youth activism, the contexts of sub-state national conflict in which nationalist symbolic struggles are resolved constitute useful case studies for analysing the influence of changing structural currents on inherited habitus and the consequent change of youth agency to suit new environments (Larrinaga and Amurrio, 2023). Our objective is to apply this approach to nationalist youth agency, and analyse the way in which young people habitually and adaptively experience, construct, and reinvent the nation in response to changes occurring both in the Basque social and political scene – the transition of the Basque nationalist left after the end of ETA’s political violence – and in the global scenario of individualised politics, focusing on the emergence of some individualised practices that this adaptation acquires.

Analysis

In the analysis, the following processes were identified.

The adaptation of the inherited national habitus: Hysteresis and creative reflexivity

The habitus inherited through family, community, and school socialisation by the young nationalists participating in this research was shaped by cognitive constructs, worldviews, emotions, and internalised practices that defined their identity within a specific national community and at a given historical moment. The generative capacity of the habitus and its concordance with the demands of a specific socio-political model allowed these young people to develop relevant political practices within that model and to attribute meaning and coherence to them throughout their childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood. This habitus was reinforced from adolescence onward, translating into contentious political practices consistent with the existing ideas in the political universe of reference.

After living abroad, I realized that X [the Basque population] was a very dynamic group of people. There was always something to do. My parents were also activists. So it was something we experienced. I remember some events from my childhood (…), violent clashes [with the police] in the street, like when they killed two [ETA] militants. All of that has been part of the landscape (…). In X, there have always been people from the feminist movement, from social movements, around me; ultimately, it is industrial. And it has given me that perspective (…) When they arrested my father [one of the founders of a Basque-language newspaper closed down by the Spanish government], that was a turning point (…) From then on, I began to be a political activist (…). I was 13 years old (Female, 25, economist, member of the of social and transformative economy cooperative).

However, the habitus previously internalised by young activists has become dysfunctional in times of change. The transformations that have occurred in the socio-political space have been the result of both internal factors – the disappearance of ETA’s violence, the strategic shift of the nationalist left – and external factors – socio-political currents and global challenges. This context has given young activists socialised in contentious mobilisations the challenge of adapting their inherited habitus and lived experiences to a new reality. They find themselves in a moment of hysteresis, which occurs when the dispositions of their habitus are at odds with collective expectations. With the political shift of left-wing nationalism, the regular functions established for its basis have been profoundly disrupted. In short, there is no longer any concordance between the dispositions acquired by young activists during their socialisation and the current demands of the new political landscape. Thus, the need for resilience emerges as a process for generating positive adaptation in a hitherto unexplored context. Until this adaptation is achieved, an interval similar to anomie occurs, in which people become aware of the dysfunctionality of their habitus. A process of collective reflexivity opens up within organisations and movements, paralleling individual reflexivity. Some young people participate in the reformulation of youth movements and organisations. Other young people withdraw from collective and organised activism, and, to the extent that the acquired habitus is transposable to various spheres of life, they transfer their activist capital to individualised political practices in everyday life.

In my opinion, that change of political cycle has had an influence. It's not just that ETA has given up its weapons. I think it coincides with the processes of transformation of the 21st century (...). The youth movement was in a moment of “we are going to reflect on ourselves, we are going to put the focus on our relationships, we are going to establish new networks...” and we were coming out of a phase of response to repression. Like, the movement was different, ready to pass to a more constructive phase (Female, 27, nationalist left-wing feminist organisation).

In terms of agency, the political capital accumulated in the form of reflective dispositions and cognitive resources has allowed them – especially the older ones – to evaluate events and seek coherence between the values of the recent past and those of today. Thus, in the transition from contentious to more routine practices, their repositioning process is accompanied by narratives in which they reason and argue the foundations and potential repercussions of change. On the one hand, they fear the weakening of the mobilising capacity of youth organisations, a progressive demobilisation and, consequently, a privatisation, individualisation and dissolution of collective nationalist youth practice in everyday life; on the other hand, they recognise the opportunities offered by other forms of doing politics that facilitate alliances with various different political actors, who are potential allies in the national construction project. As a backdrop, it is possible to see a weakening of adherence to political organizations in the declarations of some young people.

My generation will be one of the last to be active in the situation of conflict (...). Previously, the contradictions were very evident, they were there, and it was easier to take a position and become active. As at the moment there is no such explicit conflict (...) This has the consequence of not getting involved in politics. So, I see it as a challenge to maintain references and make contradictions flourish, as otherwise it will be more difficult to mobilise people. Before, the repression was very visible (Male, 26, teacher, self-managed squatter community).

I don't think there’s any organization I agree with one hundred percent. (…) Before, if you defended something specific, you defended the whole package. Now, you defend some specific things the organization stands for, but not others. (Male, illustrator, non-nationalist pro-independence party, environmental movement).

Nowadays [activism] is calmer, it’s easier to start, and it’s easier to give up. (Female, 26, student, nationalist left-wing youth organisation).

Among the younger interviewees who had not experienced the most contentious period of nationalist politics – the street fighting and other expressions of low-intensity violence – the signs of generational difference are very clear. Although they perceive themselves as heirs to a political tradition and radical values of national commitment, they are less constrained and can (re)create their radical habitus in other ways. In addition to the influence of the new cycle in local politics, they are not unaffected by the macrosocial processes characteristics of neoliberal globalisation, the precariousness of youth employment opportunities, the dissolution of linear itineraries towards an anticipated form of adult life and uncertainty in life. All these factors have conditioned the youthful interests of young nationalists and displaced their concerns and practices towards new centres of political interest within the framework of left-wing nationalism.

I think that, in general, there is a break or a difference between the old and the new generations (…). I think that older people experience their own struggle (…) We young people are working in other ways (…). I see that we are immersed in the fight for a new model of life (…) I think that they have made a huge contribution and that is why we are in this situation. If not, there would be no militant concerns in the Basque Country (...) But, in some ways, I feel bit distant (...) Some of us are prepared to leave behind the model that capitalism imposes on us (Male, 20, student, student organisation).

Beyond the strategic formulations of the leading nationalist elites and the simple reproduction of their strategy by their followers, the nation appears in youth narratives as a process, dynamic and changing, which can be reformulated and co-produced in its practices by each new generation and, consequently, also by the current younger generations.

I see that when the activity of ETA stopped, the nationalist left carried out a change of strategy and entered the institutions [representative politics]. So the national liberation movement was represented in another way (...) And I would say that it is positive. Although it participates in the institutions, the nationalist left has not ceased to be present in other spaces, in social and popular movements. Participating in the institutions meets the needs of this historical phase of gaining hegemony by having a presence in all social spaces (...) With the work we do in the towns and in personal areas, we are creating alternatives day by day, transforming our environment, building the Basque Country of the future. This is done at local level, in social movements and in other personal areas; and also in the institutions (…) It makes a contribution to the construction of this Basque Country of the future, which starts today, socialising alternatives and struggles (Female, 21, student, feminist youth group).

In effect, young people recognise that the Basque nation has been continuously explored and experienced in variable historical contexts, and they feel that their co-producers – themselves currently – are guided by the contingent interests of everyday life that periodically renew the nation’s cognitive foundations and nationalist practices.

I think that previous generations were not fully aware of the importance of other political proposals that formulated the nation as a liberator for all (...) Some [generations] contributed by linking the nation to class. Others considered it strategic to associate the nation with culture and language. And now, others see the nation as an important element for facing up to other types of oppression (Non-binary, 27, member of a feminist and LGBTI intervention cooperative)

The development of intersectional, fluid national identities

The Basque nationalist movement of the left has historically built a “framework of injustice”, on the discursive basis of the violation of citizens’ rights – political, linguistic, cultural and national – similar in rationale to the frameworks built by other movements, although different in the content of the demands. This inherited, rooted construction in society, in the current climate of a more diverse and complex Basque society, provides a structure of discursive opportunity which is open to the incorporation of new actors and political demands, allowing alignment or linking of ideologically congruent but disconnected frameworks. The expansion of meanings attributed to the nation is also an opportunity for the intersection of plural counter-hegemonic practices of diverse political subjects, which go beyond the traditional ethnic-cultural claims of Basque nationalism.

Before, probably the values that linked you to the youth organisation or the movement of the nationalist left were the vindication of the language and nationalism (...) Today, forms of politicisation have diversified, and sectoral movements are breaking through from feminism, environmentalism, the LGBTI movement, and so on (...) that are aimed at specific struggles. I think that people join the project of the nationalist left from those points (Female, 25, nationalist left-wing political youth organization).

In this context of the production of a national model adapting to new times, the focus of interest and action by young nationalists has diversified and shifted towards conflicts and agendas of contemporary social movements. In this way, the objects inherited from previous nationalist struggles – linguistic equity, territorial sovereignty, the fight for Basque culture and against repression – have now been joined by others that answer the challenges of global transformation, such as feminism, climate action and ecological transition, food sovereignty and the defence of own agricultural production. In the framing seen in the narratives of these young people, these global challenges become part of the local production process of the nation. This process is the result of the activity of a variety of sub-state actors and, consequently, of the intersection of responses to multiple oppressions. As a result, the (re)construction is oriented towards an imagined Basque nation that will materialise in the future in a context of multiple emancipations.

About the weakening of national sentiment, I think that today young people, even if we are Basque-speaking and nationalists, are more active in a framework in which we wish to expand that nationalism from the conception of the Basque Country that we are building day by day, and those contributions come from a multitude of fronts: feminism, the trans-gay-lesbian struggle, environmentalism, and many more (...) I imagine a free Basque Country (...), without gender oppression, without class domination, Basque-speaking, ecologist, with the liberation of many subjects. And I believe that the fight must start today, and that the construction of the Basque Country can be done from the intersection of all these diverse struggles (Female, 21, student, feminist youth group).

In the context of increasing cultural plurality and diversity in which young people experience the nation on a daily basis, national identity becomes an object of attention and reflexivity, a process that is not without tensions. For some young people, the Basque language remains the reference for Basque identity. However, in other cases, the national “we” becomes more fluid and its boundaries become less clear. Just as racial concepts of Basque identity were challenged in the ethnolinguistic reformulation of the 1960s, these interviews suggest that the definition of national identity inherited from the 1960s is currently facing the limitations of inclusion presented by the linguistic factor. These tensions arise within the context of a society absorbing immigrants and increasingly becoming culturally diverse, where the Basque language is not spoken by all of the population, and where nationalism lacks the integrative political mechanisms of a state.

What does it mean to be an abertzale [Basque nationalist]? I wouldn't know how to define it; for me, it's being euskaldun [*in the Basque language, this concept means both a Basque person and a Basque-speaker], because I've experienced it that way naturally (...) But, in the feminist movement in Bilbao, there are a large number of migrant women. So, it's true that it’s a constant task to explain to them what it means to be from here and to be euskaldun (...) I think that since there’s no armed struggle and, above all, since there's no very visible repression by the [Spanish] state, the question of identity has lost force (...) It seems that today there's a clash between generations. Currently, class conflict and, above all, the precariousness that exists in daily life have more weight in the construction of some young people’s identity than the national conflict (Female, 32, lawyer for a left-wing nationalist union).

Faced with the weakening of “strong” forms of ethno-cultural identity based on objective components such as language and culture, the interviews reveal that for some young people, it is easier to engage with the nationalist project through diverse identities, using a critical intersectional approach within a broad left-wing nationalist discursive framework, capable of circumscribing the axis of oppression linked to class and the deprivations that particularly affect young people, such as job insecurity and housing. Sometimes, this perspective involves critical views by some young people who prioritise social issues over national demands.

A young person doesn’t live badly because the Basque Country lacks independence (...) but because they don’t have money for their studies (...) I’d give more importance to that than to ethnicity (...) We see that we have to focus on our material concerns (Male, 20, student, student organization).

I think my generation has grown up in a context of crisis; first the 2008 crisis and then the pandemic, an economic crisis and a civilizational crisis (…) I believe that the rise of neoliberalism we are currently experiencing is pushing young people toward disconnection. Even in this fluid and uncertain environment, they really try to live comfortably and normalise the situation (…) We all live in a globalised world and share certain problems, because we are all immersed in a capitalist, patriarchal world (…) but in the Basque Country we have a specific context (…) linked to the national conflict. And we experience it differently (…) I think that in the Basque Country we organise ourselves into community and youth movements (…) We have a different [political] culture (…) But even so, individualistic tendencies still have their influence (Female, 21, student, feminist youth group).

Thus, nation-building in a conflictive national context such as the Basque Country – which faces symbolic disputes with Spanish and French nationalism – is serving to discursively frame the current concerns of young people rooted in everyday life.

The development of individualised nationalist political practices outside political organisations

The individualised experimentation of the nation carried out by the young nationalists is intimately linked to their ability to give themselves agency. Agency is linked to privilege, and to a great investment of personal work and emotions that is only possible when individuals possess certain capacities or dispositions accumulated in the form of capital. Within a progressively individualised culture where certainties are lacking, these dispositions permit them to build individual autonomy and self-realisation; it also allows them to produce meaning through personal commitments even when there has been a shift away from the formal youth organisations in which they were socialised. In this way, the most politicised young people direct their practices not only to institutionalised politics but also to those spaces where they have the possibility of developing counterpower and control; their everyday life. Individual actions, whether in the use of the Basque language, the development of sexuality and equality in relations, habits of consumption and food, or alternatives for life and work, form part of this activist, nationalist commitment.

I think that nationalist politics can be done from any place: in your group of friends, in your work, in your place of study... And you don't have to belong to a structure or organisation (...) politics exists outside of parties (...) And that has more and more strength, because of what I see around me (Female, 26, student, nationalist left-wing youth organisation).

I try to bring my struggle to all areas of my life, the struggle for the Basque language, the feminist struggle … (Female, 21, student, feminist youth group).

The adjustment of the initial habitus does not mean a complete break with accumulated activist experience, since adaptation to individualised practices means the materialisation and modernisation of values previously internalised in other forms. As a result, individualised nationalist politics have tended to connect universal values of social transformation with the classic tropes of Basque nationalism, practically and discursively framing the common themes of diverse social movements within the traditional interests and values of nationalism. Thus, sustainability is linked to territorial sovereignty and food sovereignty. The social and transformative economy is associated with small-scale local production and also with the Basque cooperative tradition. Furthermore, community solidarity, the mutual care advocated by feminism, and the work ethic oriented toward collective well-being are rooted in auzolan (a concept of traditional community work in the Basque agrarian world). In addition, the principle of equity is applied both to the reclaiming of language and to gender relations. These values are carried over into activists’ everyday practices.

We seek food sovereignty (…) We collaborate with young farmers (…) We have to show people that all of us have the key to changing things, that we cannot leave that responsibility in the hands of others (...) We have to ask ourselves what we could do, and start doing it. And by doing our bit in our everyday life, we can do a lot to transform those big things (…) I don’t shop at X [a hypermarket]; I usually buy from Basque farmers, because that way they can continue working (...) If I shopped at X, (...) I would be following the politics of the multinationals (Male, 35, teacher, group for socio-ecological transition).

The interviews have revealed various expressions of political individualisation, parallel to the relative shift that has occurred in the practices of nation-producing from the collective, organisational public sphere to the spaces of everyday life. This process is also accompanied by the formation of a post-Westphalian cyberspace that offers new opportunities for the cause of sub-state nationalist movements through the exercise of individual digital activism.

We always had a computer at home. I remember that before social media, there were chat rooms and forums. That's where I started. I remember going into chat rooms at night and arguing with Spaniards in Spanish (…) I dedicated a lot of time to that (…) then I started creating content on Wikipedia in both Basque and English (…) since outside [the Basque Country] there was no information about us. I’ve translated a lot of content from Basque into English (…) When I was in Denmark, I learned how to make videos (…) Nowadays, you can fight using social media to counter the narrative offered by the mainstream media. I think I can do a lot from this standpoint. (Male, 33, journalist, digital activist).

Both collective and individualised practices coexist today, and both are combined in the nationalist universe. As the interviews show, the most individualised manifestations materialise in young people’s experience of the nation in various areas of their daily lives, in the decisions they make and the values that guide their life choices regarding their choice of studies, career options, and leisure and consumer habits. This form of appropriation of the nation manifests itself in certain everyday lifestyles in which, through emotionally charged commitments, young people also seek self-realisation and self-transformation, the construction of individual identity, and the individual production of meaning.

I saw that if I am in this world it is to make a series of social commitments (…) I started to see the issues more from the language movement than from the political field. When I started my philosophy degree, I thought that I would be able to explain an independent Basque Country rationally (...). Afterwards, I realised that it was possible to do it culturally, because here there is a culture, there is a language (…) They needed a person in the pro-Basque association of X [a Basque town], who would be a specialist but also an activist. They took me on and I started working (…) For me there is no limit, I don't know how to set limits between work and social commitment. I mean, when am I working and when am I fighting? It’s all the same nowadays, so..., I would say that it is not work, it is a passion, and they pay me to satisfy my passion (Male, 27, specialist in an association for the revitalisation of the Basque language).

I learned Basque, improved my knowledge of it, and it became second nature. And from then on, I started using it more. I’d say that I currently use Basque more than Spanish. I work in Basque, I speak it with most of the neighbours in the neighbourhood (…) So, I’ve managed to make Basque the dominant language in my daily life, replacing Spanish. (Male, 26, teacher, self-managed squatter community).

In the case of young adults who have abandoned organised activism, the transfer of internalised attitudes from the activist habitus to everyday life is particularly notable, as is the consequent redefinition of ordinary activities such as work, which they transform into a political space for nation building.

Politically, I have abandoned nationalist organic activism. I am no longer in any structure [political organisation]. But I understand that my life is much more politicised because, for example, all my food comes from consumer groups [local products]. When it comes to leisure, I think a lot about what, how and everything. I try to interpret all my relationships through more political lenses. And my job is political (Female, 25, economist, member of a social transformative economy cooperative).

My work is political. We do politics when [in the cooperative] we offer a service or help another cooperative. And the work itself is an instrument to do politics [in the Basque cooperative business environment]. In my case, work and politics are inseparable and, to a large extent, we claim that this is how it should be. Work is an instrument that facilitates the goods and services we need to live. We demand that salaried work and reproductive work have to be one. And this has to become reality, and we have to re-educate ourselves for that. And this process of creation is also political (Female, 25, economist, member of the of social and transformative economy cooperative).

Through its political reinterpretation, work is perceived as a relevant instrument for building the imagined nation, especially among young adults. For them, work acquires an ethical meaning – sustainability, social transformation, caring for others, etc. – as well as an educational and political one. In this regard, the youth production of the nation through work translates into individualised prefigurative practices through which young people want to contribute to the construction of a virtual model of nation, linked to transformative global values they share with other social movements.

Conclusions

This article suggests the analytical relevance of disaggregating distinct groups among what has been termed “ordinary people” (Goode, 2020) within the EN paradigm. The analysis has focused on highly politicised youth groups who are not part of the political elites and who participate or have participated in a constellation of nationalist left-wing organizations and movements in the Basque Country at a time of political change. This change stems from the disbanding of the armed organisation ETA and the strategic shift of the Basque nationalist left following its integration into existing political institutions. One of the consequences has been the attenuation of the contentious, mobilising politics of youth organisations and their adaptation to the new political cycle, leaving behind what Billig (1995) called the “hot” nationalist passion typical of times of social unrest.

The structure of the analysis presented in this article corresponds to the implementation of the hypotheses put forward in the Methodology section. More specifically, this structure has enabled an evaluation of the hypotheses by establishing a sequence of three analytical moments. First, it has allowed us to identify, in the youth narratives recorded in the interviews, processes of reflection and repositioning in relation to contentious collective activism. This process has been accompanied by a certain weakening of formal association with nationalist youth organisations. Second, it has enabled us to detect the expansion of the nationalist discursive framework of young activists, which considers various different forms of oppression within the same political project and, consequently, the adoption of agendas from other contemporary movements. Thus, we have been able to argue that both processes have created a context favourable to the emergence of youth political practices that can develop not only within traditional political organisations but also outside them, even on an individual basis.

Based on a Bourdieusian framework, it has been emphasised that a change in the political landscape favours the adaptation − at a collective and individual level − of the national habitus and the activist political habitus inherited during primary socialisation to new contexts and to both local and global dimensions. As far as the initially acquired habitus can be transposable, some young nationalists have transferred the accumulated political capital to practices carried out in everyday life, giving them political meaning. In these spaces, they act as routine updaters of the nation, attributing new meanings to it.

In terms of adaptation in the global dimension, young nationalists are no exception to the influence exerted on younger generations by the cultural currents of neoliberalism and individualisation, and by the dynamics of the capitalist labour market. In this respect, left-wing nationalist movements, whose values are linked to social justice, sustainability, and gender equality, tend to share the same principles and agendas promoted by numerous social movements on the global stage, which appeal to all contemporary young people. In fact, the connection between nationalist movements and feminism, climate action, and anti-capitalist struggles is not entirely new in Basque nationalism, but the development of more conciliatory discourses and the practical construction of new, more consistent spaces of convergence after the disappearance of ETA are (Iraola et al., 2023).

Our analysis goes into further depth here, highlighting first that the changing political landscape has generated a political opportunity structure conducive to the integration of new actors and political demands into the left-wing nationalist movement, while ignoring the contradictions previously caused by the practice of armed violence. The integration of this diversity of demands has been facilitated by the adaptive effect that Gombar and others call cognitive resonance (Gombar, 2025), that is the process that allows for the alignment of principles that reinforce and modernise preexisting values in the nationalist ideology, enabling the maintenance of cognitive coherence. As Chevallier and Itçaina (2024) remind us, the politics of left-wing Basque nationalism has shaped a “culture of citizen opposition”, penetrating different areas of social and economic life that bring it closer to other struggles. Secondly, the analysis highlights the increasingly individualised materialisation and integration of the programmes of progressive movements by current nationalist activists into their daily lives. Thus, collective practices mediated by youth organisations and individualised practices coexist today within the nationalist left. And, thirdly, it confirms that this insertion of new actors and causes into the nationalist discursive and programmatic framework is giving rise to reformulations of the Basque national identity by young people who, from a variety of positions and social oppressions, are experiencing and (re)defining the nation in an intersectional and fluid way, quite distinct from the ethno-linguistic formulation that has predominated since the 1960s. This process has been possible thanks to the existence of young individuals who incorporate intersectional identities (Banks, 2021), applying a critical praxis grounded in intersectional analysis in their lives to guide their practices.

The study confirms the resilient, changing, and dynamic nature of the nation and the historical nature of its permanent (re)construction at both collective and individual levels. It also highlights the importance, in addition to organisational and institutional bodies, of the everyday and individualised spheres of youth life as a favourable space for this process of modernisation. Despite the limitations that any qualitative sample has in terms of its representativeness, this study represents, on the one hand, a contribution to the potential development of a qualitative database of everyday nationalist practices for the purposes of comparative analysis. Moreover, it opens a path for future research into the process of reformulation that Basque nationalism is currently undergoing within this cycle of change.