Securing disunion: Young people’s nationalism, identities and (in)securities in the campaign for an independent Scotland

Botterill, K. , Hopkins, P., Sanghera, G. and Arshad, R. (2016) Securing disunion: Young people’s nationalism, identities and (in)securities in the campaign for an independent Scotland. Political Geography, 55, pp. 124-134. (doi: 10.1016/j.polgeo.2016.09.002)

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Abstract

This paper explores ethnic and religious minority youth perspectives of security and nationalism in Scotland during the independence campaign in 2014. We discuss how young people co-construct narratives of Scottish nationalism alongside minority ethnic and faith identities in order to feel secure. By critically combining literature from feminist geopolitics, international relations (IR) and children's emotional geographies, we employ the concept of ‘ontological security’. The paper departs from state-centric approaches to security to explore the relational entanglements between geopolitical discourses and the ontological security of young people living through a moment of political change. We examine how everyday encounters with difference can reflect broader geopolitical narratives of security and insecurity, which subsequently trouble notions of ‘multicultural nationalism’ in Scotland and demonstrate ways that youth ‘securitize the self’ (Kinnvall, 2004). The paper responds to calls for empirical analyses of youth perspectives on nationalism and security (Benwell, 2016) and on the nexus between security and emotional subjectivity in critical geopolitics (Pain, 2009, Shaw et al., 2014). Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), this paper draws on focus group and interview data from 382 ethnic and religious minority young people in Scotland collected over the 12-month period of the campaign.

Item Type:Articles
Additional Information:This work was supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (grant number AH/K000594/1).
Status:Published
Refereed:Yes
Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID:Botterill, Dr Kate
Authors: Botterill, K., Hopkins, P., Sanghera, G., and Arshad, R.
Subjects:G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > G Geography (General)
H Social Sciences > HT Communities. Classes. Races
College/School:College of Science and Engineering > School of Geographical and Earth Sciences > Geography
Research Group:Human Geography Research Group
Journal Name:Political Geography
Publisher:Elsevier
ISSN:0962-6298
ISSN (Online):0962-6298
Published Online:20 September 2016
Copyright Holders:Copyright © 2016 The Authors
First Published:First published in Political Geography 55:124-134
Publisher Policy:Reproduced under a Creative Commons License

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