The English Migrants

In April it was revealed Scotland’s population was now at a record high of 5.4 million – the eighth year in a row it had risen, with migration cited as driving the increase.

Historian Tom Devine has hailed the “silent revolution” of English migrants who have sent Scotland’s population soaring to a record high.

The academic’s latest project shows how the number of first-generation English people living in Scotland has more than doubled in 60 years.

English-born “new Scots” now account for nearly 500,000 of all migrants – outnumbering all other first-generation migrants to Scotland put together.

Devine said the influx of English people has reversed a centuries-old tide of net-emigration from Scotland and transformed the economy, with nearly 90% of English people in work. The historian said any perception that English people have had a hard time living in Scotland has been largely at odds with the fact that increasing numbers want to settle here. Most English people didn’t see themselves as migrants and had integrated so well into Scottish society.

He said: “Really up and until about the 1990s net-emigration was the demographic experience of this small country, one of the reasons why it never achieved the population growth of its big neighbour to the south was because if many more people came to Scotland, many more people left...After so many centuries of loss, we now have a situation of net gain and the biggest net gain is not from the best known ones, not from Eastern Europe, but from our closest neighbours. It is good that our population size is growing." 

On anti-English sentiment, he explained: “The conclusion from a number of studies on this is at worst it is a feeling of resentment, it is rarely open abuse and it is even rarer – perhaps expect where drink has been taken – to be physical violence." The migrants “never threatened religious values or the wage levels of Scottish workers” helped the relatively seamless integration.

https://www.sundaypost.com/fp/silent-revolution-of-english-migrants-allowed-scotland-to-grow-says-top-historian-sir-tom-devine/