A significant feature of Kurdish history over the last several decades has been the proclivity of the Kurds for ethnic mobilization. The socio-political incentives that lead to the mobilization of different Kurdish subgroups are usually complex and occasionally serve ambiguous political aspirations. To unpack such complexities, as the title of this paper suggests, it is useful to add an additional analytical lens to the common centre-periphery approach (i.e. state nationalism vs. Kurdish resistance) by focusing on the mobilization incentives within the local context. To do so, the paper presents an ethnographic study of the social processes that shape the dynamics of Kurdish mobilization in the multi-ethnic city of Urmia in northwestern Iran, where Kurmanji-speaking Kurds live together with Azerbaijani Turks and in close proximity to Soranispeaking Iranian Kurds. The paper argues that the mobilization incentives for the Kurmanji-speaking Kurds in the local context of Urmia often serve contradictory political ends, ranging from denial of the Kurdish nation at the inter-ethnic layer to dividing it at the intra-ethnic layer, and romanticizing it at the transnational layer. The broader contribution of this paper is to elucidate how these different and sometimes contradictory forms of ethnic mobilization are able to coexist, given that they are all characterized by the same emancipatory force -'a politico-symbolic struggle over power and prestige', in Bourdieu's terminology.

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