To be confused about my partner's nationality

[ForestryForever]

Good evening,
My partner's parents were both born in Wales. They both lived and grew up in Wales. As adults they both left Wales and lived in England, where they remained.
Whilst married and living in England, they had a baby - my partner. My partner was born, raised in and grew up in England, and still lives in England.
What nationality is my partner?

Disagree completely.

OP offended him and even when he's given his explanation she's not accepting it and is on here trying to be proved right.

Nationality means the country(ies) in which you are a legal citizen.

I am Welsh-speaking, was born in Wales, as were my parents, grandparents and great grandparents.

My nationality, in the most accurate sense of the word, is British. I do usually describe myself as Welsh, though.

It's clearly important to him to be Welsh. Trying to take that away from him makes you a bit of a dick.

I think given that OP is refusing to accept his answer and that she's on here trying to be proved right, that her version of how the conversation went down is probably missing out a lot of her comments that would have provoked that reaction in him.

That depends on whether you're using the word nationality to mean citizenship - those are not the same thing - or if you're using it to mean ethnicity.

And that is absolutely fine.

Calling him half Welsh was bizarre though.

A "silly topic"? Nationality and heritage is pretty important to a lot of people!

My parents are both from Northern Ireland, I was born and raised in England and I identify as Northern Irish.
My upbringing was the same as my cousins and I spent a lot of time visiting family back home.

My children are English with Norn Iron heritage.

That doesn't make sense actually, although I know citizenship and nationality are often used interchangeably. Take the Irish nation, for example. There was no Irish state until independence. Wars were fought for the purpose of obtaining a state for the Irish nation - it predated the state. The Welsh are also a nation, that's why there's such a thing as Welsh nationalism. British is used to mean either citizenship of the UK, which is a multinational state, or as a collective noun to refer to the nations that make up that state.

Sorry, @Changingmynameyetagain, you may be Northern Irish ethnically but that is not your nationality. You are English with Northern Ireland heritage like your children.

I would say English. Would he say that second generation Indians are Indian? I doubt it? They would be English with Indian heritage.
Some of it is about how you identify, so there isn't necessarily a right or wrong answer in my opinion, although I definitely wouldn't say he was half and half as there is no logic there.

I think he's Welsh, based on his 100% Welsh parentage.
But I cn also see the argument for him saying he's English, based on his birthplace.

But whatever he is, "half English" is not it.

I'm English but my children were born in Wales and have Welsh birth certificates (in the welsh language..they are beautiful too)
That makes them British-Welsh in my eyes.
They support Wales at the Rugby!

There are different forms of nationality. a lot of answers here are focusing on legal nationality - which IS British. but with regards to cultural nationality, its basically going to be how he identifies himself based on his cultural upbringing - Welsh.

Just think about people in America that call themselves Irish or Italian because they had great grandparents that were Irish or Italian, even though nobody in the family has actually been to Ireland or Italy in generations & nobody speaks Italian.

By this logic then children born to the same parents can be different nationalities depending on where their mother was when she went into labour?

Surely there's a factual, objective answer, not a subjective one.

I don't think there is. I've got the same heritage and I don't call myself Welsh, I usually say I'm English. To all intents and purposes I am.

Imagine if she gives birth in disputed territorial waters! Actually I think someone did that recently enough so I shouldn't joke about it...

His legal nationality is British. Culturally he is Welsh.

British. But if he can do a dna test that will tell him exactly what he is genetically if it's that important to him.
My whole family were born and bred in England but I don't have a single % of UK dna. I'm over half Scandinavian and the rest Greek, Italian, Spanish, Romanian, Asian and Native American.

Well if his parents were English and he was born and raised in Japan presumably he could have dual citizenship.

Or we could just ask this hypothetical person if he feels as though he's English or Japanese.

@ForestryForever you do realise you've committed the ultimate sin by calling a Welsh person half English? Eeeek 😬 No wonder he's mortified. You owe your boyfriend a massive apology!

I cannot speak as to the history of Ireland but, as a matter of international law, your nationality is the sovereign state of which you are a subject, so for anyone holding only a British passport, their nationality is British.

Nationality is also, as a matter of law, not tied to where you were born. Art 5 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights says: "Everyone has the right to a nationality…No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality".

Welsh

(I should say not intrinsically tied to where you’re born).

No. Nationality (belonging to a nation) is often used as a synonym for citizenship (belonging to a state) but they're not always and necessarily used in those senses of the term.

Laws on nationality (in the sense of citizenship) are defined by states, not by international law. Some grant citizenship to anyone born on their territory but those are very few. The UDHR is not 'international law' in any real sense anyway.

You've missed my point. States and nations are not the same thing. Not at all.