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Parte Prima
Competenze disciplinari
might even be that «devolution» has become the catalyst for people in England
feeling more English, that as Scots and Welsh become more assertive of their
nationalities, people in England don’t want to be left out. Look, for example,
at the revival of the flag of St George as the English national symbol. There
is, too, the issue of what it means to be British these days. If, and it is only
an if, people are becoming more Scottish, more English, more Welsh, is this
happening at the expense of being British? Perhaps people still feel British, but
are they using the term to mean different things in different contexts?
Your reaction to these sorts of questions might be that you don’t tend to think
of them very much; that your national identity doesn’t figure as a major issue
in your life. That’s a very common response. For most people, national identity
is literally something you are born with, over which you have no control. We
do, however, live in interesting and mobile times. Many more people these
days are on the move, crossing borders and boundaries, settling in places other
than where they were born. For example, there are now about 400,000 English-
born people who live in Scotland, and 750,000 Scots-born people who live in
England, to say nothing of the many hundreds of thousands whose ancestry
and roots are elsewhere.
What, then, are we finding, after two years of research? The usual health
warnings apply that our definite findings will not emerge until this programme
is complete. After all, we are interested in real time change and no-one can
really tell what the long-term outcomes in identity terms will be. Certain things,
however, are beginning to emerge.
In the first place, national identity, notably in Scotland, is as important as people
think it is. It is certainly on a par with people’s sense of themselves as parents,
and more important than their social class, religion, and gender, even among
women. Being English in England, on the other hand, is more muted, and
is certainly not as salient as it is in Scotland. In other words, there is clear
asymmetry on both sides of the border. Scots are much more explicit about
their national identity than the English, who find the distinction between being
English and being British more problematic.
Not so in Scotland, where Scots find it easier to distinguish national (Scottish)
identity and state (British) identity than people south of the border. In short,
«identity-politics» are done quite differently in England and in Scotland. When
Scots migrate to England, they generally take their strong sense of being Scottish
with them, while adopting a firmer sense of being British as an inclusive form of
identity.
For English-born migrants to Scotland, there is something of a learning curve.
Many say that they never thought of themselves as English until they came
to live in Scotland, but adapt quite comfortably to live in what they see as a
different country, with different traditions and practices. In short, they often go