Dual citizenship is a

surely a curious idea. How can you have allegiance to more than one country?

It has come up in relation to migration and government benefits recently but it is something I have often come across when talking with people who are migrants. Some of them want "citizenship" of this country and others do not. For some it is a matter of not being able to hold dual citizenship and for others it is something they simply do not feel strongly about. There are other reasons too for not wanting to become a citizen but I will leave it at that.

As a child at school I was required to "salute the flag". This ceremony happened every Friday morning at "assembly". The whole school would be lined up in the schoolyard. We faced the flag (lowered and raised every day by "flag monitors") and repeated the "I am an.... I love my country...and so on." 

I have no idea what other children thought but the way we often had to repeat it more than once "to say it as if you actually mean it" was something I quite simply found of no interest at all. I had no sense of any pride in my country. It is unlikely I understood what it meant at age four when I started school. At age fourteen (and we still did it) it was simply embarrassing. I reached a point where I was mouthing the words but not actually saying them. All these years later nothing has changed. I have no sense of being a citizen of this country. I feel no sense of "national pride". For me the "national anthem" is like a dirge. 

I shock people when I say this. "But how can you feel like that?" they ask me. They often go on to tell me "it is the best country in the world" and how "lucky" I am to live here. Is it a good country to live in? Yes, it is. It is an exceptionally good country in many ways but, like the Senior Cat, I am also aware of a sense of "isolation". Migration from other countries has not changed that. "Multiculturalism" has not changed that. It may be that those things have even increased my sense of isolation. In recent years it has become much harder. All too often I am being told I am living on "stolen" land, that my Celtic heritage is not something to even be acknowledged, that other ethnic groups can celebrate the national days of the countries they (or their ancestors) come from but I cannot. 

The world is an extraordinary place. The diversity is so great nobody can hope to understand it. I do not want to be restricted to the idea that one country with a tiny population on a large land mass is more important than anything else. I do not want to believe that my allegiance should be to that and that alone.  Is that wrong?