Summary of project findings

Nationals and Migrants Project: Scottish Panel

The Project

The project focused on how individuals negotiated entry and were received into national communities and the ways in which people's ideas about who belonged to the nation changed over time. To do this, we examined: the degree to which different criteria of national community membership were voiced and received support; the consequences for action of these constructions and the strategies of those who were defined as national outsiders as they attempted to negotiate entry into new national communities. We anticipated that identity processes might change in the context of devolution so the project was designed to coincide with the first 5 years of the Scottish Parliament.

Methodology

To address these research questions a Panel was recruited. This consisted of English born people in Scotland (Migrants - M) and those born and still resident in Scotland (Nationals - N). Respondents were interviewed at least twice in 5 years. Details of the 3 rounds of fieldwork in Scotland are outlined below.

* 17 respondents / 13% attrition between Rounds 1 and 2.
** The stability of identity accounts/views on devolution for the majority of the Panel between rounds 1-2 led to a different focus in round 3. Here conversational interviews were conducted only with those whose accounts significantly differed across rounds. They were complemented by four group discussions with those with stable views. Groups were composed to enable us to tap-into our key research questions.

Publications

To-date two articles on the Scottish Panel have been published (edited versions of abstracts below):

• 'Whither Britishness? English and Scottish people in Scotland'- Nations and Nationalism 11(1) January 2005

National identity, and especially what being British means, appears to have become more problematic in recent years. Our work suggests that people regularly construe Britishness in quite diverse ways. This article focusing on 'territorial' identity, points to the limits of conventional survey work on national identity and explores how different conceptions of Britishness are developing within Scotland and England. Differences also emerge within the group of Scots-born Nationals, as well as English-born Migrants in Scotland, as the latter come to reassess how they construe Britishness, given the new context in which they find themselves. To assume one uniform, explicit meaning of Britishness is, in short highly problematic.

• 'Birth, Blood and Belonging: Identity claims in post-devolution Scotland'- The Sociological Review 53(1) February 2005.

Scotland is often seen as a good example of a civic/territorial rather than an ethnic/cultural form of nationalism. From the 1970s the campaign for a Scottish parliament stressed an inclusive, residence based, civic sense of being Scottish, and more recently, Scotland's political elites have seen the new parliament as an endorsement of territorial belonging. In this paper, we explore different identity claims currently being made in post devolution Scotland - those based on blood, birth and belonging. We argue that these are better conceptual tools for the purpose of unravelling the complexities of identity politics in this context than the contrast between civic and ethnic. Our data come from three sets of respondents: English migrants making blood or birth claims to Englishness and/or Britishness; English migrants making belonging claims to Scottishness; and Scottish nationals making claims for themselves as well as assessing migrants' claims. We also explore the significance of constitutional change in the context of respondents' identity negotiations, and examine whether it has affected their understandings of Scottishness.

Additional findings and emergent issues

• The central importance of context, when attempting to understand the complex interplay of identity markers and rules in the making of identity claims and the receipt of claims, has been further emphasised by this research.

• The variability of meaning and understanding that exists in respect of identity categories has become particularly clear to us in relation to Britishness, which within the UK context is often construed quite differently and made to do a variety of identity work.

• Place of birth usually inextricably linked to the role of early socialisation are generally seen as key to Scottishness. It was uncommon to hear nationals making bloodline/lineage claims to Scottishness and there is some evidence that such claims are increasingly seen as outmoded. Belonging claims to Scottishness, based on commitment and contribution to place/society, usually built up through lengthy residence, were made by a small number of English migrants in our sample. However, the awareness of the importance of birth and early socialisation criteria led to such belonging claims being made by migrants in qualified and internal ways, with an understanding that nationals judge them to be weak and would sometimes challenge or reject them.

• The importance of what is perceived to be a Scottish accent as a marker of Scottish national identity. Migrants spoke of it contradicting and thus undermining their belonging claims to Scottishness. 'Non-white' minority ethnics in Scotland (inevitably small in number in our sample) spoke of a Scottish accent strengthening their Scottish claim and helping in part to overcome the view that Scottishness is essentially a white identity.

• People from minority ethnic groups in Scotland may relate differently to nation/state questions re identity compared with those from minority ethnic groups in England; our sample size is too small to say any more on this.

• Despite claims by the political elite, devolution has not yet been the catalyst for a new sense of Scottishness based on belonging rather than birth. However, it appears that the identity of migrants rather than nationals has been more greatly affected by devolution. This holds particularly for those migrants who make belonging claims to Scottishness; for them there is a strong sense that devolution strengthens their claim to Scottishness. With some notable exceptions, devolution does not as yet figure prominently in the national identity accounts of Scottish nationals. Still, devolution is in its infancy and it may well have longer-term effects on how Scottishness is conceived and identity politics renegotiated.

• There was little evidence that migrants felt that they experienced any systematic structured exclusion. However, the question of anti-Englishness in Scotland is more complex than conventional beliefs might suggest. We are exploring how anti-Englishness relates to a wide range of themes: joking/banter relationships; racism; Englishness in abstract rather than practice; the migrant's origins in place and class terms; the issue of media reporting/reception; regular accounts that 'it happens to others in other places but not here'; sport; child bullying and the perceived treatment of Scots in England.

• Issues of social class seem to intersect with those of territorial identities. We do not have systematic data on these issues, but we hope to explore them further.

• With hindsight, it appears that five years is too short a period to gauge major shifts in most people's sense of identity, apart from some who have undergone important changes in social circumstances such as some forms of geographical mobility. This is an important finding in itself but we also aim to explore in finer detail the extent, however limited, of changes in identity accounts

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