Allegiances are the vital and socially integrative relationships, affiliations, and loyalties that generate different processes of personal and collective identity formation. Individuals possess multiple cultural and sociopolitical allegiances that are meaningful for constructing a sense of belonging to a specific culture, group, society, or place. Associated with issues of identity formation or transnational migration, allegiances are discussed especially in terms of constructing inner-group solidarity and exclusive sociocultural identities that may generate political action. In the historical context, the term allegiances referred to the reciprocal relationships and obligations of diverse duties that structured the European feudal society’s political and economic system.

This entry focuses on the relevance of allegiances for constructing cultural differences as part of all processes of social and personal identity formations that result in ...