How Migration Made Scotland
On the 13th of May this year in Glasgow, hundreds of people in Pollokshields came together to prevent the sudden detention and deportation of two Indian members of their community by immigration officers. You can learn more about that story here, including videos of the demonstration and an interview with one of the men who had been detained. Watching the community come together in support of their neighbours is extremely moving, and it brought a tear to my eye when the doors of the immigration van finally opened to release them. Glaswegians of all backgrounds had surrounded the van since the morning, including one person who lay under its wheels for nine hours to prevent it from moving.
Masked protesters peacefully surrounding the immigration enforcement van on Kenmure Street in Glasgow. Image: Tony Nicoletti via Scottish Daily Record
Watching a community protect their neighbours from abroad in this way made me want to write about how Scotland has been shaped by migration. It’s influenced everything about our country as we know it, from people moving across continents thousands of years ago right up to our most recent new Scots.
The earliest people in Scotland probably arrived around 14,000 years ago, but the country wasn’t permanently settled by human beings until around 12,000 years ago. Before then, most of the country was uninhabitable due to the continuing ice age, covered with the glaciers that carved our modern landscape from the rock. The sea levels were much lower, too – until about 8,500 years ago, you could walk between Great Britain and continental Europe across Doggerland, which is now submerged beneath the sea.
Back then, migration was a part of everyday life for many more people, who mostly lived nomadic lives. They would also move around for many of the same reasons that cause people to migrate today, from conflict and natural disasters to seeking new opportunities and perhaps even adventure. Although 12,000 years sounds like a very long time ago, the people who came here then were human just like us. They had personal relationships and everyday worries and communities to support, and they would have had their own reasons for ending up in what we now call Scotland.
Nether Largie South burial cairn in Kilmartin Glen. This burial place was likely built over 5,000 years ago and forms part of a ritual landscape that includes other cairns and stone circles. Image: my own
We have only tantalising glimpses into the lives of the people who lived here thousands of years ago. Their culture(s) didn’t leave writings behind, so we have to examine their bones, their art, and their rubbish heaps to try and decipher the facts of their lives. The Early People gallery in the National Museum of Scotland shows off some of the astonishing artefacts found in Scotland stretching back thousands of years, from arrowheads and flints to carved stones and ornate brooches. Elsewhere in the country, ancient ritual sites give us some understanding of the places that mattered to Scotland’s ancient people.
We can often only make educated guesses at ancient people’s belief systems, social structures and everyday routines. But we do know that they learnt from each other and traded resources and precious things, as people always have and always will. Ancient cultures were never static, any more than modern cultures are, and through the ages the people of Scotland met and were influenced by new migrants to our shores – and, of course, became migrants to other places themselves.
From our position in the windswept North Sea, we have always been a seafaring nation. Our relationship with Scandinavia and the Nordic nations, our neighbours across the water, spans centuries. The Orkney and Shetland isles in the far north were actually owned by Norway until 1472, when they were absorbed into Scotland after the Norwegian king Christian I failed to pay his daughter Margaret’s dowry on her betrothal to James III.
Although our interactions with the Vikings in the preceding centuries may not always have been peaceful, many Scandinavian people also settled here, married local people and became members of the community. Norse influence is still visible in many of our placenames and even in our language: common Scots words like braw (good), greet (cry) and bairn (child) are probably Scandinavian in origin. (See here for a fascinating list of some other examples.)
We often imagine the Scotland of the past as isolated from the rest of the world, but people travelled between here and the rest of Europe frequently. From the twelfth century onwards, when Scotland’s grand abbeys were founded, pilgrims and members of monastic orders would have visited from England and the continent. They would have brought new ideas, fashions and artistic styles with them, as well as news about political developments across Europe.
As time went on and we built cities and ports, Scotland became ever more connected to the rest of Europe. Even over 500 years ago, ships came and went from places like the Netherlands, Belgium and Italy, bringing in luxury goods, wines and textiles and taking exports of wool and leather. European merchants and their crews would have landed their cargo in places like Leith, bringing a bustling, international feel to port areas. Some adventurous sailors probably stayed forever, seeking new experiences and people – or fleeing old ones. Scotland was never cut off from the rest of the world, but part of and connected to a bigger European picture.
This 1836 lithograph shows Mary, Queen of Scots landing at Leith docks in 1561. She had travelled from France, and Leith would then have been a bustling port. Image: Capital Collections
Of course, Scottish people have also ended up all over the world, particularly in the last 400 years. The Scottish diaspora is spread around the globe, partly due to the scope of the former British Empire and Scotland’s role in its expansion and maintenance. Even prior to the 1707 Union with England, Scotland made its own ill-fated attempt at colonising Darién in modern-day Panama in the 1690s. An initial expedition of around 1500 settlers sailed from Leith, but most of them died from tropical diseases and an inability to farm in the unfamiliar climate. Only a few hundred returned alive, and the financial disaster of our failed imperial ambitions was a major factor in the union just a few years later.
This 17th-century map shows “Calidonia” and “New Edinburg” in Darién. Image: public domain
Being part of Britain gave Scotland access to its expanding empire and the plunder of its riches. From the eighteenth to the twentieth century, many Scots worked in colonial administrations around the world, and many were involved in the brutal subjugation of local people by the British Army. Scots were also deeply involved in the exploitation of enslaved African people in North America and the Caribbean, with many emigrating to own or work for sugar or cotton plantations. Even our national bard, Robert Burns, nearly took a job on a plantation exploiting the labour of enslaved people. Across the Caribbean and the southern United States, placenames and surnames attest to the legacy that Scottish slaveowners left behind.
Pipers at a highland games in Washington state, USA. Image: © James F. Perry, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
While many Scots moved abroad to play their part of the machine of Empire, many others were economic migrants. Some simply sought adventure and opportunity, others had little choice after being forcibly cleared from their land as the estate owners maximised their profits with new farming methods. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, particularly in Australia, New Zealand, the US and Canada, large numbers of Scottish people arrived seeking better lives. Communities of people who are proud of their Scottish ancestry still exist all over the world today, a testament to our own history of migration and our desire to keep our culture alive in new homelands.
The synagogue of the Edinburgh Hebrew Congregation on Salisbury Road. Although the building is more modern, the congregation is the oldest in Scotland. Image: my own
During the same period, new communities were forming in Scotland. Although there are some records of Jewish people in Scotland going back to the seventeenth century, in the nineteenth century others travelled from Russia, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, fleeing pogroms. The Edinburgh Hebrew Congregation, the first in Scotland, was founded in 1816 for twenty families. You can still see a small Jewish burial ground on Sciennes House Place from around the same time, and the congregation still exists today in the synagogue on Salisbury Road. There were several well-established synagogues by the end of the nineteenth century, especially in Glasgow and the surrounding area, where most of Scotland’s Jewish population lives today.
At the same time, new Irish communities were growing in Scotland. Many arrived in the 1840s and 1850s as refugees from the Great Famine, but throughout the nineteenth century people were also migrating across the British Isles for work. As the Industrial Revolution rolled on, hundreds of thousands of people migrated into the growing cities from rural areas, including many from Ireland.
A memorial to James Connolly near his birthplace in the Cowgate. The dates commemorate the centenary of the Easter Rising and Connolly’s execution for his part in fighting for Irish independence. Image: my own
Irish communities grew up all over the country, especially on the west coast, and Irish people continue to play an important part in Scottish culture today. In Edinburgh, the Cowgate was home to so many Irish people in the nineteenth century that it was known as “Little Ireland”. One of the city’s major football clubs, Hibernian (Hibs for short), was founded there by the local Irish Catholic community and continues in Leith today. One of Ireland’s most famous revolutionaries and trade union activists, James Connolly, was even born in the Cowgate.
At the end of the nineteenth century, significant Italian communities sprang up in Scotland too. The Italian community has gone on to make immense contributions to Scotland, not least by improving our food immeasurably! Like migrants throughout the ages, the newly Scottish Italians brought different skills and specialities with them. Many opened restaurants, made gelato or worked as musicians, and by the early 1900s the Grassmarket in Edinburgh was home to a thriving Italian community, as was Glasgow. To this day, most of Scotland’s oldest and most famous ice cream parlours have Italian names, from Luca’s in Edinburgh to Capaldi’s in Brora and the legendary Nardini’s in Largs - to name just a few! Scottish Italians are still making their mark today, and a notable number of famous Scottish people have Italian names, from Lewis Capaldi and Paolo Nutini to Armando Iannucci, Nicola Benedetti and so many more.
Scotland carried on changing throughout the twentieth century as new communities arrived from all over the world, particularly from countries that were formerly part of the British Empire. There’s a beautiful mural in Leith, painted in collaboration with community groups in 1986, which shows locals welcoming South Asian people to the area. Glasgow has the largest Scottish Asian community today – you can read more about its history over at Historic Environment Scotland.
Modern Scotland simply would not exist as it does today without the contributions of the Scottish Asian community, from everyday innovations like haggis pakora to the vital community work done by gurdwaras and mosques across the country. From trailblazing activists like Saroj Lal to the current justice secretary, Humza Yousaf, Scottish Asian people have made us who we are.
The mural in Leith, showing different aspects of the area’s history from shipbuilding to trade unionism. You can see people welcoming new neighbours in the bottom right. Image: my own
Although the currently available statistics are pretty out of date (the last census was in 2011, and the next one won’t take place till 2022 due to the pandemic), Scotland has been gradually becoming more ethnically diverse for decades. In 1991, Scotland was almost 99% white (including European migrants and their descendants, so there’s a little more cultural diversity in there than it seems!), with small Black and Asian communities. By 2011, the population was becoming more diverse, with Black Scottish and Scottish Asian communities more established, and I’m sure that the next census will reflect the increasingly diverse country I see with my own eyes every day.
Black Scots have made an indelible mark on our cultural landscape. Our most recent Makar (national poet), Jackie Kay, is of Nigerian descent and grew up in Glasgow. She writes in Scots and in English, and you should definitely check out her work. Kayus Bankole and Alloysious Massaquoi from Young Fathers both grew up in Edinburgh before winning the Mercury Prize and working with institutions like the Scottish National Portrait Gallery (give that link a click to watch the video, it’s well worth your while). More recently, the Rwandan-Scottish actor Ncuti Gatwa became the breakout star of Sex Education on Netflix, playing the iconic Eric Effiong. (Weirdly, all three of these guys went to my school, because Scotland really is that small sometimes…)
Ncuti Gatwa, celebrated Scottish actor. Image: Wikimedia Commons
Black Scots have also been essential in advancing a more honest and open examination of Scotland’s history and our links to slavery. Activists like Graham Campbell and Professor Geoff Palmer have been instrumental in leading public discussion about our history and pushing for changes to how we interpret public monuments and teach about our past.
Scotland today is home to thriving communities that include people whose families originated all over the world, and our politics, our arts and our public life are just beginning to reflect the Scotland of the twenty-first century. Just as people migrated from Scotland around the globe and shaped their new homelands, other people came here and helped to create the country we are today.
Migration is still shaping Scotland in the twenty-first century, just as it always has and hopefully always will. We are not a utopia, of course, but it has become a part of our national identity to welcome new Scots and work to build a Scottishness that’s for everyone. The actions of the crowd that gathered in Pollokshields to protect their Indian neighbours reflect the best of modern Scotland – our wee country that wouldn’t exist without the contributions of every migrant who ever arrived on our shores.
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If you’d like to support some of the organisations working with the newest Scots, check out Refuweegee, Positive Action in Housing, the Unity Centre in Glasgow and the Scottish Refugee Council.
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