A survey of the literature on international interventions in post-conflict countries reveals that the terms
‘state building’ and ‘nation building’ are often used interchangeably, when they are in fact two quite
distinct processes, and their use as interchangeable notions in the literature and international interventions
can have significantly negative consequences on the sustainability of the reconstruction efforts for countries
recovering from conflicts or having recently gained their independence.
Based on the initial findings of nine months’ fieldwork carried out in Dili, Timor Leste, this paper
explores this relationships by highlighting some of the impacts that state building policies have on the
challenging process of nation building in a newly independent country. In a brief theoretical review of the
research’s key concepts, the first part of this paper sets out to present a framework which articulates the
interaction of the processes of state building and nation building within the context of urban spaces, arguing
that to be effective and sustainable a state needs to win the hearts and minds of its population by ensuring
not only contractual state-citizen relations – defining rights and duties to build its legitimacy – but also
facilitating peaceful and cooperative relations amongst its citizens – fostering a basis for its sovereignty.
Analysing these dynamics within urban spaces, this paper explains, is particularly interesting as their
different history, position and migration flows create unique spaces where the encounter of diversity,
politics and economic activity – shaped by state policies – produce specific opportunities and challenges for
the negotiation of different identities into that of a nation. The second, empirical, part of this paper uses the
research carried out in Dili to analyse how people’s perceptions of the state building process, influenced by
different narratives of history, migration and development, produce fragmented forms of citizenship that
‘constitute themselves differently from the dominant images given to them’ (Isin 2002 in Secor 2004, 353),
thus potentially undermining the construction of a national identity.