Experiences of Scots living in England

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(Interim feedback report)

Jackie Abell, Susan Condor & Clifford Stevenson
Fylde College, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YF

June 2002

The study reported in this working paper was conducted as part of the project, 'Migrants and Nationals' within the Constitutional Change and Identity programme, funded by the Leverhulme Trust (35113) coordinated by David McCrone.

General Background

• This study is part of a programme of research coordinated by Professor David McCrone at the University of Edinburgh and funded by the Leverhulme Trust under their Nations and Regions initiative.

• This particular study concerns the experiences of people from Scotland who are currently living in England. David McCrone, Frank Bechhofer and Richard Kiely at the University of Edinburgh are conducting a parallel study concerning the experiences of people from England living in Scotland.

• Although a good deal of research has considered the experiences of people who have moved to England from various other countries, hardly any studies have focussed specifically on people from Scotland. This is somewhat curious since the latest Census suggests that more people move to England from Scotland than from any other country.

• The question of how people from Scotland experience life in England (and conversely, of course, how people from England experience life in Scotland) is obviously of considerable interest in its own right. However, issues relating to mobility across the Scotland-England Border may become particularly significant over the next few years as a consequence of recent changes to the British Constitution. There have always been differences in the administrative systems associated, for example, with education, law and housing, between the two countries. However, the devolution of further powers to the Scottish Parliament is likely to lead to an escalation of these differences, which may possibly impact upon experiences of cross-border mobility. In addition, it is possible that these administrative changes may impact on the ways in which the residents of Scotland and England view themselves and relate to each other in national terms.

This study was designed as a three-stage project.

Stage 1: Exploratory Interviews

The first stage involved exploratory interviews with people from a variety of different backgrounds. Our respondents ranged in age from 17 to 87 years. Some of the people we spoke to had actually been born in England. Those who had been born in Scotland had been resident in England between 1 month and 63 years at time of interview. The aim at this stage was to collect as wide a range of accounts as possible. Rather than imposing any pre-set agenda, we were interested in hearing about people's experiences in their own terms.

Stages 2 and 3: Following Up Key Themes

In the next two stages of the research we are picking up on some of the most significant issues to emerge in the first, exploratory, round of interviews, and investigating them more systematically.

This interim report aims to provide you with a general overview of some of the most common issues mentioned in our Stage 1 interviews[1]. Specifically:

• How people came to live in England
• The process of settling in
• How people feel they have been have been affected by living in England
• People's sense of identity and belonging
• People's views on constitutional change and the Scottish parliament.

Of course, these only represent a small proportion of the topics which people raised. Moreover, people's views on all of these topics differ enormously, and it would be quite wrong to suggest that there is any single 'migrant experience'. In this report we have simply tried to give you something of the flavour of the different types of things that people have told us. At the end of the project we shall be in a position to send you a more systematic and definitive, account of our findings.

Patterns of mobility: why do people move to England?

It was not surprising to find that the people we spoke to had originally moved to England for a wide variety of reasons. One thing that did surprise us, however, was how seldom people said that they had made a conscious decision to move across the border. In fact, only 34% of our respondents said that they had deliberately chosen to live in England. More often, people said that had 'found themselves' in England wholly or partly by force of circumstances. This was obviously the case when people had come to England with their parents as children, or when people had actually been born in England:

I remember being a bit shocked when I found out that we were moving, and being concerned about leaving my friends. But that would have been the same if we had been moving anywhere. I don't really recall thinking that we were going to a different country, just that we were moving away. In any case, we had no choice in the matter one way or the other

I was born in England. My parents bothered to go back to Scotland when my brothers were born, so they were born in Scotland. But they just couldn't be bothered with me so I was born in England. But I do consider myself to be Scottish because my entire family is Scottish and my upbringing's been very Scottish, very different to my friends when I was growing up, very different rules and things.

However, most of the people who had moved to England in adulthood also said that this had not reflected a conscious intention on their part. For example, some people had not anticipated leaving Scotland until they met a new partner who lived in England, and had moved to be with them.

A number of people said that they had ended up in England, in part, by default because they wanted or needed to move away from home, but were reluctant to consider moving within Scotland:

I just couldn't [have moved to Edinburgh]. My Mum and Dad would turn in their graves if I moved to Edinburgh. I just couldn't do it. I suppose it's the age old Glasgow and Edinburgh rivalry. I couldn't move to Edinburgh, I couldn't, my parents wouldn't put up with it, no way. I couldn't. It would have been physically impossible, I think, for me, to move to Edinburgh.

Glasgow? No way. Certainly not Glasgow. I don't know why. But you grow up with these ideas about the West of Scotland, and even when you realise that they are not true, or not entirely true, you still can't shake them off. I don't know anyone I grew up with who had gone to Glasgow. I couldn't do it. Never.

In addition, several people mentioned that their motive had not been to move to England per se, but more specifically to London. Almost exactly half of the people we spoke to had originally come to London when they first moved South.

'I wanted to get away...'

Eighteen percent of the people we spoke to said that they had originally moved to England in order to escape some problematic aspect of their lives. Of these, approximately half said that they had needed to escape either Scotland in general, or the local area in which they grew up in particular, in order to broaden their horizons, or to 'find themselves' as an individual:

It was a conscious decision to move to England, I was determined that I was going to broaden my horizons, and that I didn't want to stay under the influence of the town, and my family, which I would have if I'd have stayed within a certain radius.

I knew that if I stayed where I was, I would always be compared with my brothers and sisters, I would always be seen first and foremost as a member of the family, and not as an individual. I wanted to see what I could do on my own.

I didn't think of it as going to England. I thought of it as stepping out into the world.

Some people said they had needed to escape the confines of family and community, due to feeling stifled or lacking independence:

I wanted to leave home to get away from what I saw at the time as a restricted life that I led up there. I was the eldest girl. My father was a lovely man, and absolutely worshipped the ground I walked on. But he was over-protective. I couldn't do anything without him wanting to know where I'd been, who I'd been with, when I was coming home, how I was getting home, what time I had to be home. It was a very restricted life style for all sorts of reasons. For instance, religion is very much more to the forefront in Scotland than it is in England. And if I was going out with someone, if I brought a boy home for instance my dad would have a whole series of questions to ask him and it always started off with, 'what does your dad do?' And then the next question would be 'what school did you go to?' Because the way you could tell what religion you were was what school you went to and it's still the same now up there. And even then I realised that I didn't want it to be something that ruled my life being categorised by anything really whether it was religion, sex, gender, whatever. I just didn't want to live in that sort of environment. And I knew girls a couple of years older than me who were already getting married and living next door to their mums or even living with their mums, and I just didn't want that. I wanted to see what else there was out there.

I knew that if I came to England I could start a new life. I could start to reinvent myself. No-one would know me, I wouldn't have that baggage of everyone knowing my family and telling my parents whatever I did. So it was always my intention to move to England.

It is interesting to note that three quarters of the people who said that they had moved to England in order to obtain a measure of independence were women.

The other people who had 'escaped' to England had done so in response to a particular emotional crisis or disruption to their personal lives. This could include things such as the death of a parent, a frightening event (such as a violent attack) or, more generally, a breakdown in family relationships or reputation within the local community. Eighty per cent of the people who said that they had left Scotland to escape a traumatic event or emotional crisis were men.

I was known as a local trouble-maker, and I got a bad reputation with the police. So every time I came onto the streets, people all closed their doors. So life was a bit bad.

My auntie died and I didn't know what to do, because I had lived with her almost all my life, and then suddenly there I was, all alone in the world. And then my girlfriend left me, and I was really disoriented. There was nothing left for me at home, where I had thought of as home, so all I could think to do was to move as far away as possible

'Land of opportunity?' Moving to England for work

About half of the people we spoke to mentioned work as one of the reasons why they first moved to England[2]. Some people had moved South in order to obtain career advancement:

I think there's a sense that there were more career opportunities if you looked at the United Kingdom as a whole rather than just Scotland, where there are few top jobs and those are hard to come by.

Sometimes this had not been well received by other people:

My father was all for being Scottish. And he didn't approve at all. He's never really forgiven me, I think, even now. Especially now, actually, that he's got English grandchildren. And I remember him objecting strongly when I first said I was moving. It was 'what do you want to go there for'?

When I was telling them 'I'm going to England' 'Why are you going there you traitor?' That's what they said to me. I was like 'Oh, I'm not betraying you or anything'.

A number of people we spoke to had first come to England to take up University places. Eighty percent of these people said that they had not deliberately chosen to come to England to study, but that their decision to move had been influenced either by the lack of appropriate courses in Scotland, or else by having failed to qualify for a place in a Scottish University:

I didn't get into a university, and there was no polytechnics in Scotland then. So, I ended up in Clearing, and coming to Manchester. I didn't know where it was. Manchester could have been the south coast of England, for all I knew.

I went to London straight from college, because I couldn't do what I wanted to do in Edinburgh, or Scotland. I wanted to do dance, had my heart set on it. There was a school teaching the technique I was interested in in London, and there was one in New York, and I'd have gone to either.

Some people had felt that they had had no real option but to move out of Scotland. These included both people in middle class professions, and people for whom employment opportunities in Scotland no longer existed as a consequence of the loss of heavy industry:

Scotland's export trade is doctors and engineers. Scotland can't accommodate the two thousand doctors it produces every year out of five million people. So that's why there are so many Scots doctors in England

The reason I'm here is because there's no longer jobs in ship building, which I was brought up in. It's all closed, and there's temporary contracts for IBM, stuff like that, working two weeks and then getting laid off for six months, that sort of thing. But down here, there is an opportunity to work.

Many people explained that there was a common assumption in Scotland that the streets of London are 'paved with gold', and some suggested that this could potentially cause problems for people who had not already found work and accommodation:

Well, I think it's this fallacy the streets are paved with gold, and the bright lights, and we've heard about it for years and years. Unfortunately, now it's a lot harder than it was ten years ago. To come down here, with nothing basically, and try and start a new life.

You know, I think it's generally word of mouth that London is the place to be, or they see it on the telly and they think, wow, you know. But, I think a lot of it is because they see the bright lights and they think, yeah, that's where the money is. 'I've got a trade, I used to be a scaffolder, I'll get work down there, no problem'. And, yes, some people might do, but people aren't going to give you a job and with nowhere to live it's very hard to actually keep down a job as well.

People who had lived in England for a relatively long time often suggested that times may have changed: whereas in the past it may have been possible to earn more money and have a better standard of living in England, this was not necessarily still the case.

Getting 'stuck' on the 'wrong' side of the border

As we shall see shortly, even when people had moved reluctantly, or had found themselves in England by chance, they often ended up feeling happy to stay. However, we heard a surprising number of stories from people who did not wish to stay in England, but who found themselves effectively prevented from returning to Scotland by circumstances beyond their control. These stories could be classified into three basic types.

• First, people mentioned becoming inadvertently 'tied' to England by family commitments, for example, by a partner who did not wish to move, or by a reluctance to move too far away from grandchildren.

• Second, people who had originally viewed their move to England as a means by which to escape some family crisis or financial problem could find that moving away did not in fact solve their problems. It was quite common for people who had moved South to escape personal problems to come to feel isolated and to miss the security of friends and family in Scotland. In these cases, people often said that they would like to return home, but were reluctant to risk losing face, or that they feared being criticised for having 'betrayed' their country or community by moving away. Several people said that the common stereotype that England was the land of opportunity meant that it was hard to return to Scotland without having been seen to have succeeded.

• Third, in a surprising number of cases, people told us how they had come to England on what they assumed to be a temporary basis, but had been prevented from moving back by 'red tape':

When I finished in the army the idea was to go back and live in Scotland. I applied to my home county for a council house. And they wrote back and said to me that I wasn't eligible because I hadn't lived in there for five years. Which of course I thought was very unfair of King George because he kept sending me all over the world and wouldn't let me stay in Dumfries so they could give me a house [Laughter]

I was working in local government, and I knew that local government was being reorganised in Scotland, and in England a year before. So I thought, I'd come to England, do my bit, and then sell myself back. It backfired on a very simple thing, that I should have thought about but didn't: that appointments were ring fenced. In other words, when I was in England, there was a recruitment process that had been agreed with the trade unions. We had to advertise in-house first. Then each national advert carried a writ that said, 'Applications are invited from serving local government officers in England and Wales'. And even when I'm doing this, it doesn't cross my mind that of course, Scotland's going to do exactly the same thing. So, a year later, those jobs in Scotland that I'd anticipated would be mine came along, and I was precluded from applying for them.

I had never meant to stay here, but then I found that because I'd trained to do teaching in England, I couldn't get a job in Scotland. So I ended up effectively being stuck here. I'd love to go back, I really would. But I have to earn a living.

Experiences of Moving: Community, communication and 'fitting in'

Expectations and reality

Not surprisingly, people who had moved to England from Scotland reported a range of different experiences. Some people had not originally anticipated finding any important differences between life in Scotland and in England, and did not feel that they had really encountered any. At the opposite end of the spectrum were people who viewed themselves as having moved to an entirely different country.

For many people, their actual experiences of life in England differed, to some extent at least, from their original expectations. Most people told us that they had encountered fewer problems than they had originally anticipated. The most common comment (made spontaneously by nearly half of the people we spoke to) was that people in England were not as alien as they had imagined.

I did feel like a typical Scot, off to this foreign land of England, where I probably had a, 'mistrust' isn't the right word, that's the wrong thing to say, more of a preconception about the English than they had of me.

I thought, you know, this is nothing like I was taught at all, they're not hooligans, and they're not anti-Scottish, and they don't want to invade our country and rape and pillage and all that sort of thing that's been, you know, drummed into you through the years. And I saw a totally different side of it.

I was quite surprised how nice everybody was, possibly because when you come from Scotland you are brought up to demonise the English, you know, they're this kind of monster race that keeps coming and killing us and I was quite surprised how civilised and pleasant everybody was.

I had this conception of the English that they were all middle class, they were all rich. But once you move down here, and you meet people, you realise that is wrong. And I used to think that people in the North weren't the same as the folk down South. So that's when you realise hang on a minute, this is nonsense.

However, in some other respects, people could encounter difficulties that they had not anticipated before moving. The people we spoke to did not generally view these as serious matters, but rather as surprising facts of life to which they had had to adapt.

Community and diversity

Although people described a number of differences between life in Scotland and in England, there was generally a good deal of agreement. The most common observation Ð made spontaneously by nearly a third of the people we spoke to - was that English people are less friendly, hospitable, outgoing and easy to get to know than people in Scotland. English people were typically described as 'stand-offish', 'reserved', and 'arrogant'. In addition it was often observed that people in England are less inclined to help strangers:

There's more civility in Scotland than down here. If you were to trip over on the pavement, people would probably climb over you. I've seen it. People just don't help each other the same way. You see a lady getting on a bus with a pram, and a load of heavy shopping, and there's no seats on the bus, no one stands up. I been brought up to stand up for a woman, or an elderly person, anybody that's struggling. Down here it doesn't happen. And that's alienating, because I wasnae brought up with it. You don't see that so much in Scotland.

Scotland was often described as being characterised by closer communities and family ties. On the one hand, this could be viewed as a disadvantage: people often spoke of the 'parochialism', 'nosiness', 'interference', 'smugness' and 'claustrophobia' of the communities they had left. On the other hand, this closeness was something that people who had lived in England a relatively long time often reminisced about nostalgically:

People lived next door to one another, and were in and out of one another's houses and what not, so everybody knew everybody and helped each other out. So I felt very secure growing up cos I had lots of relatives round me, and I remember the first time I realised how close I felt to where, where I came from, was when we moved, when I was seventeen.

In my street, up the next close on both sides, I had relatives, across the road, I had relatives, round the corner I had relatives, so we had masses, I mean, I come from a very big family. My dad's the youngest of fourteen, and my mother was the youngest of seven.

People who had moved South more recently also referred to a greater sense of community spirit in Scotland, although they sometimes suggested that this was becoming less common, especially in the large cities:

In the North there is that community spirit which Edinburgh and Glasgow maybe used to have but don't have anymore. It's every man for himself down in Edinburgh and Glasgow. And maybe up north, in Inverness, they're more community orientated. And if they do see somebody having a fall, then they'll try and pick them up and help them.

One thing that many people said was that England was characterised by a greater degree of cultural diversity than Scotland:

One thing which I didn't really think of before I arrived, but which struck me immediately was how much more of a polyglot society it is here. Maybe not quite so much where I live now, but when arrive in London there's Irish and Asian and people from every country under the sun. And in Scotland though you get the odd Italian person in Glasgow, there just really isn't like the same mix of people.

I think it's great, you know, I think it's terrific that there's so much variety of different mini cultures, whereas in Scotland, particularly Glasgow, it's one big culture, you know, okay, there's posh Glaswegians, there's working class Glaswegians, but at the end of the day, they're all Glaswegians.

As we shall see, many people suggested that these factors Ð social reserve and cultural diversity - had had practical consequences for their own experiences of relocating to England, and for their feelings about settling down.

Personal experiences

None of the people we spoke to said that they had personally experienced any serious problems moving to England, although sometimes they mentioned difficulties encountered by other people they knew.

Culture shock

Some people described early experiences caused by their initial lack of awareness of cultural differences. In most cases, these were treated as amusing.

The big shock I had was when I first came down, and, someone said, 'Would you like to come in for a coffee?' and so I went in for a coffee. And that was all that you got was the coffee, whereas in Scotland, you go round for a coffee and the cakes and the pieces come out, and you're made to feel very welcome. That was the first thing that struck me, I mean, people say that Scots are mean, but I think they're very generous. Scotsmen need to keep coming south to keep this place normal!

However, in a few cases, an initial lack of awareness of local norms had caused potentially serious difficulties:

Just after I first arrived I went shopping and my son had fallen asleep, so I left him in the car and knew there wouldn't be any worries. And the police got involved. There'd been so many complaints that it was unbelievable. But this is something in Scotland they do a lot. You know, if you go into a supermarket, and a child's sleeping, you let them sleep. And if they wake up, someone will tell the supermarket and they'll say, 'Your child has just woken up in the car,' you know, 'Do you want to go back to your car?' You know, they accept that.

Miscommunication

The most common difficulties involved communication. People often described this as a mutual difficulty of intelligibility between themselves and other people:

When I moved down from Glasgow, I found I really had to slow down my speech. A big part of my job was communication, and the fact that I was unable to communicate with everybody was a slight problem. When I first moved into the Manchester office, I was amazed at all these different accents, and phraseologies. It was really intriguing and I was sort of trying to analyse what they were saying, and they hadn't a clue what I was saying

We discovered interesting things like there was suddenly a language barrier. My mother discovered when she was going shopping, for instance, for cuts of meat, neither she nor the butcher could work out what she was actually wanting. She was in Scots cuts, and English cuts are seemingly quite different.

However, a number of people pointed out that these problems may be caused in part by English people being reluctant to listen to what is being said to them:

I have never had so much trouble with my accent, I don't know if it's a fault with television but people don't seem to take the trouble to listen to the way that you speak, it has to be 9 o'clock news style or nothing. I do find it quite a problem, there's a definite language barrier which is quite peculiar.

I find 80% of English people don't listen to what you're saying, they think they're listening to what you are saying. And I think that's one of the reasons why they are not very good at foreign languages.

Some of the younger respondents also suggested that they had experienced problems of misunderstanding due to differences in sense of humour between England and Scotland:

The Scottish sense of humour can be very different. When I moved to London, people didn't understand my sense of humour perhaps as well as they did at home. It can be quite sarcastic and quite dry and I think people at times thought I was flippant. And I wasn't at all. If I'd been at home it would have been taken completely differently.

I know that some people just don't get our jokes at all. It's a completely different sense of humour. You can be saying things, and thinking they're really funny and other people don't find it funny at all.

Teasing

Many people mentioned having been the butt of humour from their friends or at work. Sometimes people took this to be friendly banter that was of little significance. However, this could still be annoying on occasions, and in some cases people seriously objected to teasing and to name-calling:

Occasionally, my friends will do a Sean Connery accent or something like that, and that's all kind of jocular, and quite often I think people forget that I happen to be Scottish. I don't think they actually make any distinctions there.

At work, I am a figure of fun, which I kind of like, cos it's very warm humour. I get teased a lot. Never, never in a cruel way, ever ever. But I remember my best friend from home came to visit and a colleague went up to her and said, 'Och aye the noo'. I remember that one time thinking, that's just not even funny, it's so pathetic.

We don't like it, obviously, when people mimic our accents. And I certainly don't like it when people make fun of whiskey, pipes, kilts or anything to do with Scotland at all, I object to that strongly

I got sick of being called a 'sweaty', and it took me a while to work out what a 'sweaty' was, and then somebody says, 'Look, it's Cockney slang, sweaty sock, Jock', and, I was quite offended by that. I thought, 'Well, that's nasty', you know?

Bullying

Whilst adults might differ in the extent to which they viewed miscommunication as a source of amusement or as an annoyance, and could regard teasing either as insulting or as a bit of fun, few people suggested that they had suffered any real harassment. However, children could be affected more seriously. What adults might regard as an interesting experience of communication difficulty, children could find quite distressing. Similarly, forms of 'teasing' that adults might find simply tiresome, children could experience as bullying:

When we first arrived we didn't speak the same as the other children so they couldn't understand what we were saying and, well, I think you just feel an outcast really. We were very unhappy, we were very unhappy

We had to take my son out of nursery school for a bit. They said he was mute, uncommunicating. He wouldn't do anything for them. What we found was that they didn't understand him. Because they didn't understand him, they were saying, 'What are you saying? What are you saying?'. And we actually felt that he was being picked on by the teachers. And the other children he went to playgroup with saw him in the same way. They saw him as being different, the teachers can't understand him so he's different. So we had to take him out of nursery.

Because I was so young it probably felt the same as moving abroad. Because it just seemed such a long way. And when I started school, I hated it. People were horrible to me because of my accent. Just horrible. I remember going home and crying, 'I never want to go back, this is horrible'. They were calling me Haggis and all that sort of thing. It was horrible.

The advantages of a Scottish accent

Although people sometimes complained about having fun made of their accent, many of the people we spoke to were also keen to emphasise the potential advantages of a Scottish accent in England. Some noted that people in England warm to a Scottish accent:

I've got nothing to show that I'm Scottish apart from my accent, and the sort of perception [that English people have] is that we're all sort of friendly.

I think in most places you go with a Scottish accent, everyone is like 'Oh I love the Scottish accent'.

You know, they hear the accent, and people seem much more willing to talk to Scottish and Irish people. People kind of stop and ask you where you're from. I think that people are very interested in you because you're from somewhere different.

Another advantage was that people in England are generally not able to use a Scottish accent to infer social class:

Most English people can tell what class somebody's from by their accent. And it's quite easy for me to go to a dinner party and they don't know what school I went to and they don't know what my income bracket is.

Where I live there is a very big thing about middle class and working class and oppression. And I can kind of get away with it because I'm Scottish so people can't really place my accent so they don't realise I'm a posh Scot and that my daddy is a doctor.

Even negative stereotypes of Scottish accents could be turned to advantage:

I quickly realised, as I was moving down into a sort of senior position as a boss, that it was a weapon I could use, you know, a sort of Alex Ferguson type. Dealing with a team of engineers, they'd make a point, and I'd say, 'Well, what d'you mean by that?' And all I meant was, 'What do you mean by that?' But they took it as being a rollicking. So that was quite amusing [laughter]

'Fitting in' and social activities

We heard very few accounts of people experiencing any real difficulty making friends or being accepted socially. However, about 20% of people had originally found it difficult to adapt to living in a more reserved and less community-oriented environment.

It was the biggest step I've ever made in my whole life moving out of Glasgow, and leaving my Mum and Dad, that was the worst part, really, leaving my Mum and Dad. I remember at the time, my first month there, I'd speak to my Mum on the phone at night time, both of us would be sobbing and oh it was terrible, terrible. But then I had my partner, he didn't want to move to Glasgow, he wouldn't move up, so I had to move down.

When we first came we were obviously much younger, and we pined for home. During the first six months, my wife had to go home, because I was at my work, and I used to come home for my lunch. I'd come home, and she'd be crying. I had my work and that kept me occupied and I was making contacts, but my wife was on an estate, with nobody, no immediate family, to say 'Hello, and how are you?' That was difficult for her.

In general, most people said that they had felt that they had been positively welcomed in England. As we have already noted, many people said that they had initially expected people in England to be less friendly than they actually were. Consequently, for many people the process of 'fitting in' and being accepted turned out to be much easier than they had originally anticipated.

It's been better than I thought it would be. I thought I would have the mick taken out of me a bit more. Be called Jock or Tammie or whatever. I don't know why but I thought it would be. But the response I got was general indifference which was quite good.

I think Scottish people have got all these notions about England being very unfriendly. I didn't lose any sleep over it, I was delighted that my husband had a job, so I was very glad to be coming. And I was mature enough to know that these stereotypes don't actually bear out, and stuff. But still, I didn't know what it would be like, living in England. I don't know whether we were just lucky, I mean, I love living here, I've always liked living here.

I can't actually off the top of my head think of any time I was received any in a particular nasty way.

Why was fitting in so easy?

Although people suggested a number of reasons why it had, in fact, been relatively easy for them to fit in, three main explanations predominated.

• First, people said that people in England are generally inclined to be positively disposed towards Scots. We have already noted how some respondents said people in England tend to like a Scottish accent. In addition, it was said that people in England tend to associate Scots with positive characteristics:

England's been very good to me, I cannot knock England. But by the same token, I would say that the Scots are very welcomed in England, because we're known as hard workers.

• Second, people suggested that the diversity of English society had made it relatively easy for them, as a Scot, to fit in. In particular, people who had lived in large cities in England suggested that it had been easy for them to move in because people were already used to living in a 'cosmopolitan' environment:

I thought that, for some reason, people were going to be aggressive against me being Scottish, but the opposite was true. Basically, I think, because it's such a cosmopolitan city they've got to be accepting of different cultures, races, religions.

I did fit in quite easily. Because, there were all sorts of people who came in to the pub where I worked. And the manager of the bar, he was an Irishman, so I fitted in quite nicely. I didn't feel like an alien, you know, because there was so many different cultures, and different people there that one more really didn't make much of a difference.

The English are not very fussy who lives here.

The English basically don't care where you come from. Whether you're Scottish, or Irish or Pakistani or whatever. I was in London for more than a year before I met my first cockney. It was all people from other places, from Newcastle or Scotland or wherever. People might take an interest in where you're from, but they don't start doing 'us and them'.

• Third, people who were living in the North of England often attributed their positive experiences to a particular sense of affinity between the Scots and people from the North:

Maybe because this is the northern part of England that I've adjusted quite well and it's been OK. Because in the northern part of England they are friendly here, nice and it's still home to me. I mean I've only been here for a month but I don't feel like I'm in a totally different world.

In Scotland, a lot of people have got that whole conception about English people, you know, they're rude or obnoxious, or quite arrogant, things like that, but in the North of England, it's quite a different, you know, they are much more like Scottish people, and I think they try and identify themselves a lot more with Scottish people.