The park (Finsbury) we walk past to get to our nearest tube stop has a curious feature, an entire field set aside exclusively for the playing of American sports. Moving back to London from Michigan it was rather surprising to go for a walk and see kids playing Little League along the way. I've not yet made the time to go and find out if those using the facility are primarily ex-pats and their children, but based on conversations I overheard on the bus it seems quite a few are English kids fascinated by US culture.

That pocket of American culture is one of the less remarked upon features of what is widely considered the most ethnically diverse borough in one of the world's most culturally varied cities. Most of the attention goes, like that in a recent Time Magazine article, to our neighborhood's vibrant Turkish, Cypriot, Polish and Bulgarian populations, or perhaps to the large North African community a little further up the road. Such diversity is a key part of what drew us to Haringey when we left the American Dutch enclave that had been home for the past few years, and quite a stimulus for trying to work out what it means to be English, British, and European in the early 21st century.

Conversations about identity almost inevitably get framed in oppositional terms. The Rupert Murdoch owned press that dominates so much of the UK's national consciousness has driven much recent debate by focusing on the supposed perils of being part of the European Union (and therefore ceding some power to structures we share with our neighbors) and of what they characterize as a liberal attitude to immigration. And internally, questions of English identity often arise either around sports matches or in response to the strong national identity of many Scots. In an effort to seize some political leadership, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown recently called for a variety of measures that would strengthen our sense of national identity, frustrating many of us on the more liberal side of his constituency by suggesting a day celebrating our armed forces (as if it's our military stance that makes us who we are).

Britain has a long and complex history. For much of that history England has dominated the other countries and, as is so often the case in such situations, its identity has never had the clarity of its smaller neighbors. Studying medieval history, even past the point where England became unified as a single kingdom, it can be hard to know where the borders between it and France lay as power moved back and forth through countless wars. All the countries of the British Isles have seen waves of newcomers, whether invaders as in 1066 and before, or immigrants, and at each juncture the national identities have shifted along with that of its population.

But the English seem to have the most trouble tracing any continuity or distinctiveness through it all.

In our post-colonial world those shifts take a new form. Whether it's refugees moving in Africa or the Middle East (or from South Pacific islands suffering the ravages of global warming), or members of the new Eastern European members of the EU coming to Britain to stretch their horizons, massive movements of people can happen at a very rapid pace--despite lacking the freedom of movement and lax borders afforded to the movement of money. Scare stories abound about the dilution of our national identity as if it sat somewhere becoming stagnant in a glass, and of overcrowding as if we were approaching the density of the vibrant cities of Southern and Eastern Asia. The pace of change puts many on the defensive and gives such lore an easy welcome.

That rapid pace of change gives us little space to take a long term view of where things are really heading. Statisticians' work is reported in such differing ways that it's very hard to know whether between those coming in and those leaving Britain there is a net growth or fall in its population. Just as many who aren't born here move into the country, there are many British people moving abroad for a wide variety of reasons. Recent experiences of many Polish immigrants, for example, returning to their homeland because of its booming economy hint that the same may happen with many other recent immigrants. However that turns out, as we look at the impending reality of massive resource shortages, it's likely that strong trends won't be visible for some time to come.

A recent piece on the BBC's excellent From Our Own Correspondent interviewed some of those Polish people who had moved to Britain and then subsequently returned to Poland. There were various reasons for their departure, but the combined forces of a robust Polish economy and the desire to be near family as they raised children seemed chief among them. It was clear that the reporter saw in those Poles a hybrid identity -- their time in the UK had affected who they were and how they saw the world. It probably isn't as simple as saying they were European, but instead, that their sense of self had yet another layer added by their experience as immigrants.

The nation state has proven a pretty good unit for government. Certainly states as they've existed for the past couple of hundred years (since a group of insurgents declared independence for the United States) seem to be the most stable form we've yet found. But as Europe saw through the 90s they're not secured by any guarantee, and increasingly geopolitics seems to be focussed on cities and their regions as much as on nations. Whether you're looking at the relationships between the mayors of London and New York, the way US cities rallied around the Kyoto treaty after it was dismissed federally, the victory of the London Roller Derby team over the Canadian national team, or the way South East Asian mega-cities define their populations more than any national boundary, the city is definitely on the rise.

That is easily seen if you look around our neighborhood. While I spend much of my time racing across the city, for many of those around me their lives are entirely focussed in this neighborhood. Their identities may be formed on a base of being Turkish, Bulgarian, Cypriot, or whatever, but they are residents of Harringay, part of the tapestry of London, and resident in the UK. They, like myself, become shaped by cultural forces that are pulled from a vast array of intersecting ones. Our identities as people and as a group can't be understood in purely tribal or classical geographical terms; we are all composites.

Nations, cities, and other units of identity and governance are dynamic entities, responding to pressures inside and out, shifting and evolving over time. And so is the identity of their residents, citizens, subjects or otherwise. As the hazy words above will indicate, despite thinking long and hard about it I don't know whether to call myself English, British, or European, and I increasingly think that that uncertainty--or at least the complementarity it hints at--is a core part of my identity, to be worked out in a changing landscape of diverse neighbors.

8 June 2008