Programme full

Wednesday 15 April 2015 09:00 - 10:30
PAPER SESSION 1
However, alongside these technologies and the possibilities they represent for social research has arisen challenges.
These include the ways in which the visual, by its very nature, renders participants visible in the films, photographs
and visual material produced, making ethical norms of anonymity and confidentiality almost impossible to guarantee.
Drawing on my participatory visual research with children, young people and families living in low-income
neighborhoods in the UK, the paper considers the ethical implications generated by working co-productively with these
groups.
This includes the specific challenges emerging from visually portraying children’s lives in ways which support them to
represent their experiences and our ethical and moral responsibilities to them and to the wider communities in which
the research is situated. In focusing on the editorial decisions made both with (and independently of) the children as
co-researchers, the paper elaborates the social and moral complexities of undertaking visual research with children
and families and the possibilities and limitations of visual data as a means of representing and disseminating
experience.
Race, Ethnicity and Migration 1
CARNEGIE LECTURE THEATRE, CHARLES OAKLEY BUILDING
RACE, ETHNICITY AND MIGRATION STREAM: SCOTLAND
Race, Nation and Ethnic Minorities in the 'Scotland Question'
Meer, N.
(University of Strathclyde)
At a time when all the political parties of Scottish politics are trying to establish a persuasive vision of the nation,
inquiry into where ethnic and racial minorities fit into these debates remains a peripheral activity. Focusing especially
on the lesser known question of how elite political actors are positioning minorities within projects of nation building,
this paper draws upon original empirical data in which three predominant clusters emerge. The first centres on an
aspirational pluralism, in so far political elites are less inclined – in contrast to counterparts in some other minority
nations - to place ethnically determined barriers on membership of Scottish nationhood. The second concerns the
competing ways in which the legacy of Scotland's place in the British Empire is appropriated by actors of different
political hues, and so assumes a multiform role. The third cluster points to potential limitations in minority claimsmaking
and recognition, especially in terms of formal multi-lingualism and corporate multi-faithism, something that
may partly be explained by the tension between multinationalism and multiculturalism. Taken together the article
illustrates how elite political actors can play a vital role in ensuring that appeals to nationhood in Scotland can be
meaningfully calibrated to include minorities too.
Anti-Irish Racism in Scotland
McBride, M.
(University of Glasgow)
This paper will explore the legacy of anti-Irish racism in Scotland, attempting to determine: (1) the extent to which the
Irish were racialised historically and (2) the effects of this discrimination on the Irish community today. Despite
historically representing Britain's biggest immigrant group, the Irish diaspora has largely been absent in most theorists'
accounts of race/ethnicity, remaining an 'invisible (white) ethnic minority' (Mac an Ghaill 2001). In Scotland, a major
centre for Irish immigration but less ethnically diverse than England in terms of non-whites, the popular notion that
there is no comparable (historical or contemporary) problem with racism (Finn 1999) could be challenged via a
thorough examination of the Irish experience. Race and ethnicity have been neglected in most literature on the Irish ,
which tends to be more historical than sociological. Those sociologists who do write on the topic predominately
historicise discrimination against Irish Catholics, using quantitative studies as evidence that such prejudice – widely
known as sectarianism – is a problem of the past. Yet some recent well-documented instances of (apparent) anti-Irish
racism in Scotland have brought the issue back into the public debate, and my initial PhD fieldwork suggests that, for
some people, openly expressing Irish heritage is considered problematic and discouraged. Through in-depth
interviews with participants from Irish Catholic backgrounds, and online and real-life ethnography to observe how
particular Irish identities are played out and received publicly, I aim to contribute to an important gap in the existing
literature.
BSA Annual Conference 2015 70
Glasgow Caledonian University