Douglas Robertson

'We Hate the English, Except for You, Cos You're Our Pal': Identification of the 'English' in Scotland

This article explores the experiences of the largest minority group in Scotland: the English-born. To date the English in Scotland are a relatively under researched group. Our research indicates that a key experience for many English people in Scotland is that of a constant reminder of difference. This can make questions of ‘belonging’ problematic. Constructions of ‘Englishness’, via often routine and mundane interactions with Scottish people, were often foisted upon those perceived to be English. This has implications for how we understand ‘Englishness’ and ‘Scottishness’ and the development of national identities more generally; particularly for minority groups. The article also argues that for many Scots ‘the English’ continue to be the key ‘other’ that helps to define what it is to be ‘Scottish’.

'It's as if you're some alien...' Exploring anti-English attitudes in Scotland

English people are the largest national or ethnic minority within Scotland but remain under-researched. This is despite a view taken by many writers, and by the popular press, that anti-English attitudes within Scotland are a major social problem. Via 30 in-depth interviews, this paper explores the experiences of a group of English people living in Scotland and the extent and nature of any anti-Englishness they have encountered. The paper also focuses on the ways in which notions of race, ethnicity and essential differences between Scots and English people are regularly encountered by English people living in Scotland. The ‘racialisation’ of the English minority in Scotland is also discussed in this context.

Cultural Expectations of Homeownership. Explaining Changing Legal Definitions of Flat ‘Ownership’ within Britain

Following the break-up of privately rented flats in both England and Wales, and Scotland, two distinct property ‘ownership’ systems emerged. Each sought to provide individual ‘ownership’ of the flat and collective management of the block in which the flat was contained. Leasehold ‘ownership’ effectively retained the previous landlord-tenant relationship because of a peculiarity in English law that only allows ‘positive covenants’, such as maintenance obligations, to be enforced on the first purchaser of a flat, not subsequent purchasers. Although in Scotland outright individual ownership of a flat was legally possible, the management arrangements covering the common parts of the building have not proved satisfactory. Neither legal arrangement put in place an ‘ownership’ or ‘governance’ regime which matched popular cultural expectations of what individual homeownership should constitute. The scale of and scope of property law reform over the last 30 years illustrates how these popular cultural expectations have demanded due recognition within the British property system.

Knowing Your Place: The Formation and Sustenance of Class-Based Place Identity

Abstract This paper argues that the significance of place has for too long been overlooked within housing studies, rarely meriting more consideration than providing a descriptive backdrop. The emphasis on descriptive backdrop is due to place more often being examined and conceptualized in physical terms, rather than as a social construct. Only through understanding how place becomes bonded to a specific class-based identity can the explanatory potential of place be fully realized. In order to achieve this, it is necessary to engage with Bourdieu’s “theory of practice”, as it embraces the different forms of capital, their respective symbolic constructions and how these interplay within his twin notions of “field” and “habitus”. By using Bourdieu’s theoretical framework to analyse empirical data derived from the Scottish city of Stirling, it is possible to reveal just how class-based place identities are constructed and reproduced. Conceptualizing place in such terms can enhance our understanding of social structures, social hierarchies and how the process of social change influences and impacts upon housing. Revealing the processes by which individuals come to “know their place” addresses a long-acknowledged weakness in housing studies.

Local elites and social control: building council houses in Stirling between the wars

This article examines the role played by local councillors in constructing new housing in Scotland during the inter-war period. Rather than view local authorities as simply the objective agency of central governments ambitions to construct council houses, we argue that the self-interest and motivations of councillors have to be recognized as significant factors in this process. It is argued also that the concerns of private landlords were neither ignored nor sacrificed in the rush to build new housing. Rather, given that councils remained dominated by local business men, many of whom were private landlords, councillors acted in ways to protect their own material and class interests. In so doing, they consciously, if implicitly, shaped the social geography of twentieth-century Scotland.

The Raploch: A history, people's perceptions and the likely future of a problem housing estate

This article explores the experience of belonging and identity, and the social distance and separateness which has long characterised aspects of Stirlings Raploch housing estate. Detailed historical archive work uncovered the limited social planning and architectural ambitions set for this housing estate, when compared to the earlier Riverside development. The consequences of such decision making and subsequent poor management of the estate is then articulated through a series of qualitative interviews which explore attitudes to the construction and sustaining of neighbourhood and community identities. Achieving a physical solution to Raplochs social problems has eluded a series of recent regeneration initiatives and this paper suggests that the core problem is not primarily architectural but rather one of class-related discrimination and stigma which has been core to Raplochs identity since the 16th Century.

The regeneration of Glasgow: The contribution of community‐based housing associations to Glasgow's tenement improvement programme 1964–1984

Abstract Glasgow is the U.K.’s leading exponent of urban renewal. This paper traces the development of the citys massive urban renewal programme, focusing in particular on the linchpin role played by Glasgows community‐based housing associations. By drawing upon a unique data set, covering all publicly funded renovation awards issued between 1974 and 1984, an attempt is made at measuring the effectiveness of targeting this programmes expenditure. The paper concludes by highlighting the various factors crucial to Glasgows successful renovation strategy.