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

[heyokish]

hola. Mo pointed me over here (as she may have mentioned) because I was pondering about this at her just yesterday. The short version was, "would I sound like a total wanker if I described myself as Scottish?" So I read this and nodded a lot

[alitheapipkin]

I'm glad this chimes true to other folks with similar experience :)

I have another friend from my school days who now lives in Scotland and her comment a few days ago was similar - 'can I call myself Scottish yet even though I still have an English accent?'. She's lived up here 15 years the same as me.

[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.

[auntyros]

I don't know if I'm unusual or not, but I do feel quite a strong sense of English identity. I am definitely from England (and specifically from Stafford). That is where my current home is, it's where I grew up, it's where many previous generations of my family have lived. I'm sure that if you go far enough back there must be ancestors from other places, but none that I know of. I don't have any obvious links to any other country or any part of the UK. I've never felt a strong affinity to 'British' as a description for myself, though of course it's technically accurate

[alitheapipkin]

I wonder how much your first paragraph highlights the difference between us. I mean we grew up in the same county but I have no family from Staffs at all, my parents moved there for work and had no prior connection to the place, so while it was home growing up, I was always made to feel like I didn't belong there.

Of course, our experience of moving to Scotland is very different too. I've only ever lived on the East coast where no-one really speaks Gaelic and the shops are open longer on Sundays than in England. And even saying that, Aberdeen would never have been home, maybe Dundee is just special :)

[auntyros]

Right. It's hard to know how much of it is the family ties, how much is to do with general cultural/political differences, and how much is the lived experience.

[auntyros]

Reading it through, that's somewhat unclear. I do know of ancestors (one grandparent and more in previous generations) who were not from Staffordshire. But none who were not from England.

[unblinkered]

Yes. This. So much this

[alitheapipkin]

It is a belonging thing, isn't it? That's exactly it. I might have been born and bred English but I never felt like I belonged where I grew up - I was an alien to the people I grew up with and equally alien to my relatives down south.

[unblinkered]

I think so. Perhaps also a certain amount of being actively welcomed into the community, which I'd never encountered before.

[danieldwilliam]

I feel Scottish. Perhaps a product of Scotland’s civic not ethnic nationalism.

I was born in Birmingham, to English parents, one Cotswoldian, one Manchuanian. I’ve lived, on and off in Scotland since I was three. I hold Australian citizenship.

But I feel Scottish. I live here but even if I moved away I would feel Scottish.

Scottish is as Scottish does. Perhaps.

It's a complex question, nationality, when one is living in a multi-national state itself embedded in a multi-national or pan-national superstate.

[alitheapipkin]

Complex indeed.

That was one of the deciding factors for me, the 'would I still feel Scottish if I didn't live here any more' question. Because one, I can't imagine not living here any more, and two, Scotland is a part of me now, if I moved back down south, I'd be glued to the Scottish media to follow what was going on up here just like all the Scottish exiles I know working in England.