Nativism is not eternal; it was invented. In the 1600s, colonial planters in the Caribbean invented “whiteness” to divide poor European servants from poor African slaves. Before that, you had caste, creed, and citizenship – but not race as we know it.

The idea was exported: to India by the British, to Algeria by the French, to Southwest Africa by the Germans. It was systematised through phrenology, skull measurements, and “scientific” racism. It reached its hideous climax in the 20th‑century genocides.

But here’s the forgotten part: the elites who promoted these ideas never lived by them. They sent their children to diverse schools, intermarried, held multiple passports. Race was for the masses; the elite had a bubble.

Today’s nativism is the ghost of that colonial script. It resurges when economic anxiety meets cultural vertigo. The cure is not to argue with the ghost; it’s to build places where the ghost doesn’t belong.

Enter the transnational city – a Special Economic Zone within the EU that is explicitly multi‑ethnic, multi‑lingual, and multi‑jurisdictional. A city where the legal framework is designed for mobility, not borders. Where a software engineer from Nairobi, a solar installer from Oulu, and a biotech researcher from Barcelona can live, work, and raise children together.

The EU is already a regional confederation with open internal borders, a common currency, and shared legal standards. Adding a network of intentional SEZs (think “Shenzhen for the 21st century”) would turn the EU from a bureaucratic apparatus into a laboratory for post‑nativist living.

History doesn’t reverse, but it can be outgrown. The nativist impulse is a scar from an old wound. Transnational cities are the new skin.