Knowing Is Not Telling: Identity Ossification in LLM Representations of Trans-border Communities
Ethnic and cultural identities rarely align with political borders, a tension made sharper by migration and long-standing cross-border ties. Communities such as the Sami, the Rohingya, and the Kurds have long lived across more than one state. This tension is especially clear in mainland Southeast Asia, where many communities share history, language, and culture across state lines. We study nine such transborder ethnic communities along China's southwestern border with mainland Southeast Asia, looking at how large language models (LLMs) represent them. We define and study identity ossification: a pattern where LLMs turn a fluid, cross-border ethnic identity into a single, fixed nation-stat...
| Authors | Minglu Sun, Lan Chen, Hang Jiang |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.CY |
| Published | 8 October 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 8 October 2026 |
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