National identity, home and independence

[alitheapipkin]

National identity is a funny old thing. As a young person, I think you probably start off inheriting your national identity from your parents but as you get older, particularly if you move away and make your home some place else, it becomes a more complicated. Unsurprisingly, the indy ref has brought up a lot of issues regarding national identity

Comments

[slemslempike]

I had thought of Scottishness as a more inclusive identity, but hadn't noticed the Scottish-Asian vs English-Asian example - I think you're right, and it's rather telling.

[alitheapipkin]

I hadn't really noticed it until the indy campaign I don't think, but then I hadn't really thought about this stuff that much before then really, other than to notice I now use 'we' to mean Scotland as opposed to England and feel the need to point out that this is my home and I've lived here for 15 years whenever people refer to me as English.

[alitheapipkin]

I also wonder how it plays into the issues with radicalization in the muslim community. The impression I get is that it is less of an issue up here because the community feels more a part of Scottish society but I have no idea if anyone has done any work to back that up.

[alitheapipkin]

Of course the other issue here is that I don't know how much of a bubble Dundee is in its very mixed but also very friendly atmosphere. I lived just down the road from a mosque in Aberdeen but I think a lot of the attendees were connected with the university.

[bunn]

I suspect it's numbers. 5% of the English population are Muslim: whereas only 1.45% of the Scottish population are, and of course the English population is much bigger.

In a sample of 2.5 million people, it's more likely that a tiny number of them will decide to do something idiotic than in a sample of 77,000. When I lived in Leicester, I could see how some people could choose live there without really having much contact with non-Muslims at all, although on the whole the various different communities were friendly and there were lots of efforts going on to make sure everyone could understand each others language and habits.

[alitheapipkin]

You may well be right. I tried to be clear that I didn't want to assume my experience was representative of wider society because I'm very aware that in Scotland I live in what is I think, the most ethnically diverse city by percentages, whereas everywhere I've lived in England (rural Staffs and Lancaster) is very white English.

[bunn]

I'm not sure it's telling in a racist way though. I think its not so much that people who are of English ancestry tend to identify as English, it's that English-British is not a very strong identity, so people who have any other identity to choose from tend to pick that.

For example, in most cultures I can think of, there's a tradition of pride in the flag, the traditional dancing, the traditional music, the history and achievements of the place and so on. But if you are English, being proud of your flag is complicated because it's been appropriated by the National Front, Morris dancing and traditional singing are considered at best deeply uncool, and if you are proud of the history you can lay yourself open to accusations of being a rampant imperialist. Much easier to identify as Scottish, Welsh, Cornish, a Yorkshireman, a Lancashire lass and so on: those identities are both more unique, and less difficult.

[slemslempike]

Yes, I know. I'm English myself.

I wouldn't necessarily say it's telling in "a racist way", I do however think that there is a definite ethnic element to English identity that's missing from your summary above. And while I agree with you about the complications of English identity, I think, as alitheapipkin's pointed out in her post, that it's important to note that the making of Scottishness as a civic identity isn't something that just is, or has acidentally happened. It's the result of a concerted (though subtle and not always cohesive or successful) effort from institutions and people within Scotland. The same move to inclusiveness hasn't happened in England with English identity, at least it didn't for the time I lived there up until 2010.

[alitheapipkin]

Yeah, slemslempike said more or less exactly what I was going to. I was just trying to show how I think the 'nationalism' behind a Scottish identity is subtly different to the 'nationalism' behind Englishness, because I saw a lot of people south of the border feeling all the saltire waving during the indy ref campaign was anti-English and focused on ethnic Scottishness, whereas actually there were a lot of non-ethnically Scottish folks doing it too, which I don't think came across on the national media coverage, which was very keen to play up divisions and belittle the yes movement as a bunch of Nationalists with a capital N rather than the it's our country and we love it inclusive brand of people who don't consider themselves nationalists in the same way.

[mimmimmim]

True, but move on one generation and immigrants to England are just plain English, no modifier for where their ancestors came from. See: my father's family. I was out with a Nigerian friend at the weekend, and because she's lived abroad a lot - her father's a diplomat - people in Nigeria tell her she's not Nigerian. Well, she's up for citizenship here soon, and then as far as i'm concerned she's going to be English.

I'm English. It's an accident of birth. But whenever I think about it, and how many different people have come here to make better lives over 2000 or more years, I'm quite happy to be part of a diverse and energetic people. I'm really hoping that looking at how the Scots want to change and improve their society makes the English look at the same things, it's something we can learn from.

[alitheapipkin]

Ah, see that is what I've never come across. The person who said to me about being a recent immigrant to Scotland was born and bred in London but all his family are Greek Cypriots and he identifies as strongly British not English at all. I'm glad to be corrected on that front, maybe it is just that my sample size of immigrants to England is tiny because of where I've lived.

Yes, I would love for more people to have that attitude across the UK. Ethnicity is after all a pretty silly thing to get so concerned about, what matter is the community and society we live in. We are all immigrants if you go back far enough but it's the future that matters.

[mimmimmim]

It could also be that a lot of English people don't realise they are English until they've lived in other parts of the UK. The differences are subtle, and it can take encountering them to make you realise they're there. I didn't feel English until I went to university in Wales.

[alitheapipkin]

Ahh, that is an interesting point I hadn't considered.

[mimmimmim]

The blindness of privilege. When the media are portraying your culture as the default and the default government is in your country, it's hard to realise things are a bit different elsewhere.

On top of that, nationalism is a bit of a dirty concept in England, so people would rather think of themselves as British than embrace an identity that might make others think of them as a bit UKIP at best... I think perhaps we need to learn from Scotland and Wales and celebrate our good things and enjoy sharing them.

[alitheapipkin]

That is precisely it - moving to Scotland was a big awakening for me, I had no clue whatsoever how ignorant I was about Scottish society until I got here.