[Suggestion] Citizen Demographics

[Atlanta-Breyer]

I was poking through my nation stats that you can access through the main page (such as Government spending and causes of death), and noticed that there was nothing regarding citizen descent and ethnicity. Something along the lines of a pie chart displaying the diversity (or lack thereof) of the country. By default being dominantly native, in my case it would be Atlantesian, and would either increase or decrease based on certain issues given to you in-game. Such as if you chose to accept immigrants into your country, it would decrease. If you banned immigration entirely, it would remain stagnant or even decrease slightly (the percentage of other ethnic groups). Your nation could also be by default more homogenous if you belong to a smaller region, and less if you are located in a feeder or sinker.

But eh, just an idea I guess. Something that came to mind five minutes ago.

[Trotterdam]

The problem is that NationStates dislikes defining any concrete ethnic groups (blacks, Arabs, etc.) to avoid offending anyone and to avoid getting in the way of your roleplay (an ethniticity that's a minority in every European nation might be the majority in yours).

So you wouldn't get much farther than dividing your people into three categories: "majority", "minorities native to the land", and "minorities from immigration". And many players would complain that the middle category is incompatible with their roleplay history.

As a few points of refinement, "majority" could be renamed to "leading demographic" that is not necessarily the majority (whites in Apartheid-era South Africa?), and the line between "native minorities" and "immigrant minorities" is blurry in the case of groups that immigrated many generations ago and have been in the country since, now having more ties to this country than to their ancestral homeland (African-Americans descended from slaves).

Either that, or you would have to use labels like "minority A", "minority B", etc. (to distinguish between nations that are true melting pots and nations that have merely two or three ethnic groups working together while shunning everyone else, although I don't think any issues can cause something like the latter anyway).

More complication can be added if, in addition to ethnic demographics, you also include things like religious demographics, but again, there aren't going to be a lot of options. National religion, generic minority religions, Violetism, atheism.

[Atlanta-Breyer]

The problem is that NationStates dislikes defining any concrete ethnic groups (blacks, Arabs, etc.) to avoid offending anyone and to avoid getting in the way of your roleplay (an ethniticity that's a minority in every European nation might be the majority in yours).

So you wouldn't get much farther than dividing your people into three categories: "majority", "minorities native to the land", and "minorities from immigration". And many players would complain that the middle category is incompatible with their roleplay history.

As a few points of refinement, "majority" could be renamed to "leading demographic" that is not necessarily the majority (whites in Apartheid-era South Africa?), and the line between "native minorities" and "immigrant minorities" is blurry in the case of groups that immigrated many generations ago and have been in the country since, now having more ties to this country than to their ancestral homeland (African-Americans descended from slaves).

Either that, or you would have to use labels like "minority A", "minority B", etc. (to distinguish between nations that are true melting pots and nations that have merely two or three ethnic groups working together while shunning everyone else, although I don't think any issues can cause something like the latter anyway).

More complication can be added if, in addition to ethnic demographics, you also include things like religious demographics, but again, there aren't going to be a lot of options. National religion, generic minority religions, Violetism, atheism.

I see what you're saying here, but my initial point was to not name any concrete or even any real life ethnic groupings (such as blacks or Arabs), simply to avoid any complications regarding offending anyone. What I was trying to get across (but failed to) was to take the other slices of the pie chart from other player-created nations. For example, my nation could be 92% ethnic Atlantesian and 8% whatever nation that is also in my region. In the event of someone not wanting to appear in other player's nations demographics, there could be a off switch in their settings page (or be off by default).

I also don't need (or want) anything as complicated as what you're saying. People who are native to the nation are labeled under, well, native. For example, using a real life country, Romania, we would group white ethnic Romanians in the same group as Romani. The Romani people are still native to Romania, even though their ancestors came from North India. But I suppose that could cause complications as well.

[Trotterdam]

The game generally has a conceit that your nation only responds to your own actions (unless you're in the WA, or during Z-Day) and other nations cannot affect your stats. Having who else is in your region affect anything non-cosmetic would break that (and in the process, make people clamoring for us to implement a war mechanic even more vocal).

Additionally, how would the game decide which other nations in the region have more emigrants to yours? Emigration rates can be affected by various things (banning/penalizing emigration, and being a terrible place that lots of people want to get away from), but I don't see a way to have the number of immigrants from nation X in nation Y be more interesting than "X's emigration coefficient multiplied with Y's immigration coefficient". So it'd largely come down to "natives" and "immigrants" anyway.

(Though it now occurs to me that emigration rate would make an interesting WA census. We have "Tourism" and "Most Avoided" that measure how eager people are to enter your nation, but nothing for how eager people are to leave your nation.)

[Mousebumples]

The game generally has a conceit that your nation only responds to your own actions (unless you're in the WA, or during Z-Day) and other nations cannot affect your stats. Having who else is in your region affect anything non-cosmetic would break that (and in the process, make people clamoring for us to implement a war mechanic even more vocal).

Additionally, how would the game decide which other nations in the region have more emigrants to yours? Emigration rates can be affected by various things (banning/penalizing emigration, and being a terrible place that lots of people want to get away from), but I don't see a way to have the number of immigrants from nation X in nation Y be more interesting than "X's emigration coefficient multiplied with Y's immigration coefficient". So it'd largely come down to "natives" and "immigrants" anyway.

(Though it now occurs to me that emigration rate would make an interesting WA census. We have "Tourism" and "Most Avoided" that measure how eager people are to enter your nation, but nothing for how eager people are to leave your nation.)

I could see a possible breakdown of "Native citizens," "Immigrants," and "Expats" or something, but I don't claim to be an Admin in any way, so this is above my pay grade.

[Trotterdam]

Expats, per definition, aren't in your nation anymore, and so aren't part of your demographics. Unless you bring them back with #226, but then they're back to just being natives who've been on an unusually long vacation.

[Nullarni]

Ahem... Expats are simply citizens of a country who chose not to live there. Your nation can have expats of other nations. Make sense?

[Sanctaria]

Ahem... Expats are simply citizens of a country who chose not to live there. Your nation can have expats of other nations. Make sense?

That would make them immigrants to your nation, which would be covered under "immigrants".

As Mouse said, I don't see this being supported, and from a game point of view, I don't see the benefit. Maybe a "Highest Immigration" Census at the most.

EDIT: Though that said, I think the Tourism one probably best covers it as it can be extrapolated that if tourists want to come to your country to visit in droves, so too would immigrants.

[Nullarni]

That would make them immigrants to your nation, which would be covered under "immigrants".

No, expats retain the citizenship of their motherland, whereas immigrants do not. They are similar but different.

[Sanctaria]

That would make them immigrants to your nation, which would be covered under "immigrants".

No, expats retain the citizenship of their motherland, whereas immigrants do not. They are similar but different.

I'm pretty sure the game wouldn't make that highly pedantic and petty distinction.

[Trotterdam]

EDIT: Though that said, I think the Tourism one probably best covers it as it can be extrapolated that if tourists want to come to your country to visit in droves, so too would immigrants.

Not necessarily. Often there'll be a correlation, but there could be places that are fun to visit for a short time but that you wouldn't want to live for the rest of your life, such as somewhere with a beautiful environment but a crippled economy. #292 also allows you to explicitly choose to kick out tourists who stay too long or encourage them to stay and immigrate.

As I said, though, I think an emigration census would be even more valuable, as it isn't as easily covered by anything currently present. (Most Avoided comes closest.)

Immigration and emigration won't always be the opposite of each other, either. An oppressive dictatorship with a strong iron curtain would have less of both immigration (because nobody wants to go there) and emigration (because leaving is forbidden or severely penalized) than a more liberal nation.

[Nullarni]

I'm pretty sure the game wouldn't make that highly pedantic and petty distinction.

Meh, I was simply explaining what "expat" means to Trotterdam. Mousebumples was the one who listed them as a separate demographic.

However, I do think the difference is there and it has more significance than you give it, though. But that is a discussion for another time and place.

[Sanctaria]

I'm pretty sure the game wouldn't make that highly pedantic and petty distinction.

Meh, I was simply explaining what "expat" means to Trotterdam. Mousebumples was the one who listed them as a separate demographic. The difference is there and it has more significance than you give it, though. But that is a discussion for another time and place.

I'm sure you believe the significance is of note.

EDIT: Though that said, I think the Tourism one probably best covers it as it can be extrapolated that if tourists want to come to your country to visit in droves, so too would immigrants.

Not necessarily. Often there'll be a correlation, but there could be places that are fun to visit for a short time but that you wouldn't want to live for the rest of your life, such as somewhere with a beautiful environment but a crippled economy. #292 also allows you to explicitly choose to kick out tourists who stay too long or encourage them to stay and immigrate.

As I said, though, I think an emigration census would be even more valuable, as it isn't as easily covered by anything currently present. (Most Avoided comes closest.)

Immigration and emigration won't always be the opposite of each other, either. An oppressive dictatorship with a strong iron curtain would have less of both immigration (because nobody wants to go there) and emigration (because leaving is forbidden or severely penalized) than a more liberal nation.

This may be true in some cases, but as I already said, there are no plans for this to be incorporated into your national description pages. If something does come of this suggestion, at best it'd be some new censuses, but we're working on some other things at the moment that are of more priority. New industries, for example.

[Almonaster Nuevo]

For what it's worth, I see ex-pats as my citizens who are domiciled abroad. Your ex-pats are then my resident aliens / guest workers.

Here's a possible breakdown...

Citizens:
Naturalised immigrants
Native-born to recent immigrants
3rd or subsequent generation

Ethnicity of citizens (by self-report):
Majority racial group
Other regional origin
Minority grouping

Non-citizens:
Seeking Asylum
Normal immigration in progress
Awaiting deportation
Resident workers
Foreign Students
Other long-term residents
Short-term visitors

The relevant region would not be specified, so there is no change when a nation moves.

[Sanctaria]

The game doesn't track that much information.

[Almonaster Nuevo]

Not at present, obviously.

I wasn't actually envisaging all of those being separately coded, just semi-randomly derived from a couple of underlying stats such as attitude to immigration, and inclusiveness as the OP implied. It was more an attempt to work back from RL categories towards something that might be implementable without picking out any offendable groups

I don't see the original suggestion as a high priority, but it could still be a nice bit of flavour.