Th is article deals with ethnic and national processes in Mongolia. It analyzes the panmongolian, socialist and post-socialist ethnic/national discourses, paying special attention to the practices of inclusion and exclusion of border groups in/from the category of the “nation.” I analyze the influence of the ethnological discourse on the current ethnic policy in Mongolia, and consider the trials of national identity construction leading to the ambivalent perception of Inner Mongolians and Buryats as both: “us” and “strangers.”