This chapter focuses on Colombia, which has the highest numbers of internal displaced people worldwide (over 6 million), to generate conversations about how the internally displaced are identified, counted and categorised. Drawing on Hannah Arendt’s ideas regarding the ‘banality of evil’, the author develops the concept of ‘the banality of displacement’ to examine the increasingly bureaucratic and thoughtless nature of an institutionalised discourse in Colombia that has led to a creeping normalisation of forced displacement. This, he argues, has come at the expense of a more complex characterisation of the internally displaced population. Examining the case of the Afro-Colombian population, he shows how a ‘colour-blind’ approach to displacement has meant that despite this group’s recognition as an ethnic minority in the new 1991 constitution, for years no data was collected regarding the ethnic composition of the displaced population. This, despite longstanding arguments that displacement has affected black groups disproportionately to the mestizo population. By exposing the thoughtlessness in government and NGO circles alike, the ‘banality of displacement’ approach seeks to instil critical thought countering the normalisation of displacement in Colombia and elsewhere and suggests that a re-reading of Arendt may be important to the wider global refugee crisis debate.

Working-class writing and publishing workshops had their origins in the counter-cultural trends of the late 1960s. By the 1970s they were engaging with urban communities where there was a strong class consciousness. This chapter charts the way in which working-class culture became a significant source of new ideas and practices. In particular, the cultural role of schools, adult education, community organising, adult literacy, popular history and the labour movement are examined in relation to the emergence of a movement of working-class writing and publishing workshops. In each of these areas, ideas about culture, technology and tradition were being reworked in order to foster popular cultural participation.

This chapter examines how the governance of refugees in British cities follows what, borrowing from Roberto Esposito’s theory of biopolitics, can be considered an ‘immunitary logic’. According to this logic, asylum migration is approached through mechanisms of moral-political distance and deferral by state officials, as well as symbolic-spatial splintering of urban spaces with asylum migrants concentrated in already deprived areas. The chapter highlights how these mechanisms operate at the local level of British cities in similar ways to what happens with the externalisation of border control across the Global North. At the urban level, distance, deferral and immunity also work through the privatisation of basic services, thus pushing the governance of refugees closer to the sociolegal control of the urban poor.

Working-class writing workshops were infused with a sectarian spirit of being alternative and they actively challenged elitism in favour of a participatory ethic. A national debate flared up over the decision by the Arts Council not to award a grant to these workshops on the grounds that their work was of ‘no literary merit’. From the 1990s, relations thawed and a widening acceptance of worker writers came into being across many cultural and educational institutions. The movement of workshops changed into a broader inclusive network while attempting to retain an element of distinctiveness. Survival itself proved extremely difficult in these circumstances.

This chapter is intended to provide a short historical background to Scotland. It discusses the formation of the kingdom and its battle to remain an independent state. We discuss at what point were we then all ‘Scots’? We consider the various factors that acted to unify the country as well as those that acted to divide. We are not historians and we do not seek to compete with those who are, but we feel it is important to discuss how the country came into being and how it maintained its identity through both the Union of the Crowns in 1603 and the Treaty of Union in 1707. This background will be important to understand some of the long-running social tensions that echo through to today and still impact upon contemporary social and political Scotland.

We begin by asking how many Scotlands there are and how we may make sense of them. Geography has long acted as a way of dividing the country – for example Highland versus Lowland, Glasgow versus Edinburgh, etc. – but people also have an overarching sense of belonging to another Scotland, whatever it might be. There are those who feel part of civic Scotland and those who feel excluded. There are social, religious and cultural differences within Scotland, as within any country. What we focus on and set out in this initial chapter is how we will differentiate them and approach our task, by unpicking the various elements within Scottish life, to expose the many Scotlands that exist, and the many Scots who inhabit them.

Sport plays an important role within Scottish life, not least as a focus of national identity. Although Scotland is not an independent state, it has its own international football, rugby and cricket teams and competes independently at the Commonwealth Games. Scotland has played a significant part in the development of sport, particularly within football and in golf, with the world headquarters of golf being at St Andrews. This chapter explores the role that sport plays within Scottish life and in helping to sustain a separate and distinct sense of Scottish identity.

This chapter looks at the importance of heritage within Scotland and the development of the country’s tourist industry. There is a significant literature on tourism, its relationship to national identity and to the way in which Scotland ‘sells itself’. The chapter therefore relates back to earlier chapters. In many respects, Scotland has led in certain tourist developments such as genealogical research and ‘roots’ tourism and we explore and explain this.

The census has demonstrated that Scotland is increasingly a multicultural society and the proportion of black and minority ethnic (BME) people in Scotland has doubled to 4 per cent between 2001 and 2011. In Glasgow it is 12 per cent. This chapter looks at the ‘ethnic’ make up of Scottish society and discusses the experiences of minority groups, refugees and asylum seekers and migrant workers. The chapter will make reference also to white migrants within Scotland, for example from Europe, Ireland and the rest of the UK.