ABSTRACT
Ethno-national mobilisations in the West are social movements. Each social movement presupposes the existence of a conflict which emerges with consciousness-raising (which has a double ideological and identity dimension) and brings about the collective mobilisation of a specific group. I Some of these traits may be weak or absent in certain ethnonational processes: those processes which are instigated by traditional peripheries that react against a modern centre; those which are led by local political elites in federal states; or those led by tribal or clan hierarchies in vertical states of the Third World. In these cases the construction of identity is not particularly intense, and the conflict is settled exclusively by elites of the centre and periphery with very little, or no, involvement on the part of the masses. On the contrary, the traits which define social movements are purest in those cases where peripheral reaction is based on support for a national initiative against an integrated unitary state.
