Migration and Identity Among English Graduates in Scotland

1. BSPS Annual Conference (Manchester) September 11, 2008 Migration, Settlement and Identity among ‘English’ Graduates in Scotland Ross Bond School of Social and Political Studies, University of Edinburgh (co-investigators: Katharine Charsley, University of Oxford and Sue Grundy, University of Edinburgh)

2. Background to the study • Research programme on Scotland’s demography co-funded by ESRC and Scottish Executive • Our project specifically concerned with graduate migration. Why? Political context; dearth of previous research; Scotland’s status as ‘importer’ of students (many from England) but ‘exporter’ of many non-Scottish graduates

3. Aims and methods • Illuminate medium-term migration patterns. Who stays and who leaves? Why? • Secondary analysis (HESA and Census) • Case study of graduates from University of Edinburgh in 2000: diversity of students; balance between recent and more ‘distant’ graduates • Postal questionnaire sent to all graduates: 43% response (see UK Data Archive SN 5456) • Follow-up interviews with 80 graduates (40 in Scotland, 40 elsewhere)

4. Brief summary of some general findings • Survey: 70% originally from Scotland still in Scotland 5 years later, compared to 21% not from Scotland. Balanced minorities of ‘delayed’ and ‘return’ migrants (c. 1/7 of each). No obvious ‘brain drain’ in relation to England • Interviews: Motivations shaped by opportunities (principally career-related), connections (partners, family and friends; affinity, identity and belonging) and expectations (of staying, leaving, returning). • For more detail see: www.esrcsocietytoday.ac.uk/ESRCInfoCentre/ViewAwardPage.aspx?AwardId=4045 Bond et al (2008) in Scottish Affairs no. 63: pp. 31-57

5. Why study migration and identity with respect to English people in Scotland? • Historical trend of net emigration • Political encouragement of immigration • Dominance of ‘civic’ conception of Scottishness, but also evidence of less inclusive attitudes • English migrants important because: inter-national but intra-state; Scotland’s largest ‘minority’ (c. 8%); disproportionately influential and/or disadvantaged? • Our cohort relatively recent migrants from England

6. Previous research on ‘the English’ in Scotland • Different conceptions of nature and significance of British/Scottish/English identities • Responses: Britishness?; regional identity?; Scottish identity?. But obstacles to ‘adopting’ Scottishness • ‘English’ identities may provoke discrimination, but variations in extent, and also by class/region. Potentially negative effect on ‘belonging’

7. Our data • Interview data on national identities and potential influence on migration and settlement • Derived from questions on ‘home’, belonging, personal national identities, experiences of differential treatment, and other emergent data

8. Identification with Scotland • Non-Scots develop identification with Scotland. Most prominent among those with family connections and/or continuous residents • Identification developed through a number of routes

9. Identification through ‘adult socialization’ ‘… I would say I felt more attached to Scotland in general than I did Yorkshire. Basically I’ve had most of my adult life here and I intend to stay here’ (NSIS 11) ‘I would say my own home is here in Edinburgh. Most of my adult life I’ve been in Edinburgh’ (NSIS 4)

10. Identification through institutions ‘No I do identify with Scotland. I do. I work for the [Scottish institution] so I’m quite involved in, […] well at a low level I suppose, but you know, on policy and all that kind of business. So I connect with the country in that way, through my work anyway’ (NSIS 12) ‘… part of it, the job that I now do working in [Scottish institution] and all that kind of stuff, it makes you think about Scotland and identify with Scotland I think’ (NSIS 20)

11. Identification through ancestry ‘… my parents and their family are all from Scotland, and in fact, as far as I can tell from the people that have become interested in family trees and stuff, they’re all from Scotland as far back as you like to go’ (NSIS 1) ‘I’m probably a little bit different to other people ‘cause I describe it like my soul place, my parents lived up here for fifteen years before I was born, just moved down for my dad’s job, so they’ve always called it home because they’ve family up here …’ (NSIS 3)

12. Barriers to Belonging?: ‘claiming’ Scottishness ‘… I never really strongly thought of myself as English, because both my parents were Scottish so obviously I was Scottish as well. That seemed fairly self-evident to me when I was little. Since I’ve come here I have modified that slightly just because I think, because of other people’s assumptions, because when you speak in an English accent then you’re English’ (NSIS 1) ‘I’d love to call myself Scottish […] My parents are Scottish, my university was Scottish, I’ve been to Scotland every year of my life but with this [English] accent I can’t… it’s a bit distressing’ (NSIS 17)

13. Barriers to Belonging: direct discrimination? • Widespread experiences of anti-Englishness: majority of those who had left, and substantial minority of those who had stayed • BUT: seldom severe; sometimes not experienced; not typically primary reason for (considering) leaving • BUT: significant enough to weaken capacity to retain graduate migrants

14. ‘Well I don’t think you’re going to, as far as English students go, I don’t think you’re going to hold anybody if this kind of treatment and attitude towards the English prevails. I don’t think particularly that I have had a bad—I have had a bad experience, but I don’t think I’m particularly unique’ (NSIS5) ‘I used to live down in Leith as well at one point and that was obviously, you know, it’s a bit more a bastion of Scottishness and again, it was just that sort of, you felt that barrier came down and it didn’t matter who you were and what you did, that was it. They’ve made their minds up about you. […] I didn’t feel as if it was a place, Scotland didn’t seem to be a place that opened its arms and kind of said, “listen we really want you to come here” ’ (NSNIS 17)

15. Significance of class and regional origins ‘That’s the one thing that when you were asking about where you feel more at home, that’s the one thing that slightly holds me back from feeling completely at home in Edinburgh, and that I would seriously think about if I was going to move up there. Because I did feel like, not with everyone at all obviously, but quite often actually there was a slight antagonism towards English people. And it might be partly because I’ve got quite a posh English accent, I don’t know. I think friends of mine who were from Northern England didn’t have such difficult times’ (NSNIS8)

16. Crossing borders • A British as opposed to Scottish/English national frame of reference • Little perception of parallel anti-Scottishness in England ‘… don’t know if I was prepared for as much of it. I mean, the anti-Englishness was quite novel because in England you don’t really have anti-Scottishness, it’s not really a big thing, you don’t really notice it’ (NSIS 11)

17. ‘Any kind of allegiance to Scotland has been kind of killed by the anti-English feeling of the Scots…’ (NSIS 2) ‘… I can see that if you are English you might think “actually I don’t need to be somewhere where taxi drivers think I’m a tosser when they hear me speak”. I don’t, I don’t really need to do that’ (NSNIS 9)

18. Conclusions • Exclusion related to national origins and identities not limited to migration between states • But ‘anti-English’ discrimination in Scotland is complex and for many does not represent a barrier to identification or settlement • Positive evidence to build on to encourage more non-Scottish graduates to remain in or return to Scotland • Migration also substantially influenced by (other) economic and social factors • Need further political awareness and action? • Potential lessons for nations with similar ambitions and issues