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Making sense of national identities in modern Britain

University of Edinburgh, Scotland, D.Mccrone{at}ed.ac.uk

In discussion of `identity politics' in modern Britain, issues of ethnicity and national identity rarely seem to connect in the literature. Whereas the vocabulary and rhetoric of ethnicity belong to a framework of `multiculturalism', those of nationalism and national identity relate to constitutional politics and the devolution of power. The article argues that this separation is a result of differential patterns of migration in the postwar years into the constituent nations of the UK, as well as different debates about the meanings of state (British) identity and national (English, Scottish, Welsh) identities. By focusing on how people choose to mobilize and negotiate the cultural markers and rules relating to identities which are available to them, the article argues that the relationship between ethnicity and national identity in these islands is not straightforward. Nevertheless, there is opportunity to reconnect these dimensions by exploring how they play in different territories of Britain. Thus, there is no single `national' debate about issues of nationality and ethnicity, and while being `English' (as opposed to British) as an identity seems to be less available to ethnic minorities, in Scotland and Wales nationality and ethnicity interact differently with one other to the extent that some forms of hybrid identity are possible.

Key Words: Britishness • Englishness • hybridity • Scotland • Scottishness

Ethnicities, Vol. 2, No. 3, 301-320 (2002)
DOI: 10.1177/14687968020020030201


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