‘Scotland's different’: Narratives of Scotland's distinctiveness in the post-Brexit-vote era

Abstract

While Scotland has been portrayed as an outlier in the context of Brexit, we know relatively little about how ordinary people in Scotland, including a growing migrant population, make sense of this (political and media) narrative. In order to address this gap, in this article I look at everyday narratives of Scotland's distinctiveness in the post-Brexit-vote era among the long-settled population and Polish – and to a lesser degree other European Union – migrants in the East End of Glasgow. By drawing upon scholarship on everyday nationalism and imagined communities, I explore discursive claims which romanticise Scotland as different and ‘welcoming’ of immigration and position it in binary opposition to England. How is Scotland produced as different in the context of Brexit? How are these stories used to re-imagine increasingly diverse Scottish society? In what ways are they being employed by migrant communities?