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How do young adult migrants negotiate their identities in Scotland?

Scotland has been described as having a progressive politics towards immigration and migrant integration, which is closely tied to the civic brand of nationalism that has been promoted by the Scottish government in the 21st century. But what effects do these narratives have on young adult migrants who have made Scotland their home, and how do they relate to these narratives when negotiating their own identities?....

In my Identities article, ‘Belligerent shyness and puzzlement: a discursive analysis of ‘not racism’ and the post-racial on UK phone-in radio’, I investigate ‘the talk about the talk’ about racism – including when that talk is about how we shouldn’t talk about it. In particular, I analyze commercial phone-in radio calls in the UK, where speakers seek to minimize or deny the relevance of racism, and find that there is a persistence of performed shyness and puzzlement....

What makes a migrant ‘Black’? Frequently, negative rhetoric surrounding migrants in the United States and Europe have used race and culture as a means through which to contrast the inherent ‘belonging’ of citizens with the seeming ‘non-belonging’ of migrants. Migrants’ presence and cultures are, at worst, feared due to assumptions derived from 16th-19th century rhetoric which drove the colonization of people broadly conceived as Others. This is particularly the case for Black migrants....

In the past, I’ve warned against seeing Trump and fascism as the ultimate threat(s) because they can serve as extreme, exceptional and, in the case of the former, individualised distractions from problems in the wider system, mainstream politics and liberal democracy in ways that can position these as a bulwark despite their role in mainstreaming the far right and upholding the same inequalities and injustices. Then there was Musk’s Nazi salute at Trump’s inauguration and questions about what it meant....