It is sometimes argued that multi-levelled citizenship regimes can resolve older border questions, and allow conflicting nationalisms to coexist with the identity of each recognised and respected. This paper argues that as we broaden the concept of citizenship , national division seeps into citizenship rights. The Northern Ireland case is taken to show both the broadening of citizenship in the Good Friday Agreement, , and, at the same time, the lack of criteria by which to cope with symbolic national conflict. It is argued that liberal nationalist resolutions work only inasmuch as identities themselves change: indeed civil republican resolutions, often criticised as utopian because they require identity change, may be more realistic.
