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Title: Who Belongs to the Nation?

Abstract: Why do citizens have differing views on who is 'truly' American, or British, or Chinese? When is one considered 'one of us'? The model endogenizes the composition of the national identity as a bundle of costly traits. Agents face trade-offs between acquiring costly traits, choosing an identity to achieve positive distinctiveness, and shaping others' trait expressions. Views on national identity arise from strategic interactions. The model predicts growing minority group proportion from low levels leads to dominant group members shifting away from 'non-attainable' traits for minorities, such as ancestry and birth, while continuing to emphasize 'attainable' traits, such as language. This strategic shift enables the dominant group to extract maximum behavioral change from minorities in Goldilocks region(s) of intermediate minority proportion. However, continued growth in minority proportions reduces assimilation incentives and shrinks the set of costly traits the dominant group can feasibly demand. This can trigger a backlash to an exclusive identity as the strategic benefits of offering an attainable identity collapse.