Nationalism and internationalism

In 1964, a special Gallup survey asked people for their reactions to the following statement:  "We shouldn't think so much in international terms but concentrate more on our own national problems and building up our strength and prosperity here at home."  55% agreed and 34% disagreed (11% had no answer).  But there were large differences by education and age--the chance of disagreeing was less than 10% for people in their 80s with a grade school education, but about 2/3 for college graduates in their 20s--so it would have been reasonable to expect a gradual move away from agreement.  The question has been asked a number of times since then; the figure shows the percent who disagree:

There's a lot of short-term variation, but if there is any trend it is towards agreeing that we should  "concentrate more on our own national problems."  In the most recent surveys, the educational differences are still there (and about as strong as they were in 1964), but the age differences have disappeared. 

The same survey contained a question about immigration, which I've written about before.  In 1964, only seven percent said that immigration should be increased and 42 percent said it should be reduced; in the most recent survey, 28% said increased and 29% should be reduced.

What I think this shows is that a growth in "cosmopolitanism" doesn't necessarily mean a decline in nationalism, in the sense of a belief that you have stronger obligations to members of your own nation than to humanity in general.  A few days ago Pico Iyer had a piece in the New York Times in which he said "I’m delighted to return to a newly open and creative London where the average person was born in another country. My four grandparents, all born in India, came of age in a richly multicultured society, but one in which they had little chance of encountering neighbors from Cambodia or Haiti or Ethiopia, as so many New Yorkers or Angelenos can today."  That's the sentiment that has grown--that ethnic diversity is one of the good things about your nation, or that more ethnic diversity would make it better.   Of course, not everyone feels that way--there are people who liked London the way it used to be and are sorry to see changes--but that is a difference between two kinds of nationalism.

[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research and Pew Research Center]