[LINK] "Italians In Scotland"

[rfmcdonald]

Palash R. Ghosh's International Business Times article about the history of Italian immigration in Scotland last century interests me, and not only because of the parallels Ghosh draws with eastern European immigration in this century. The Scotland I've seen invoked by Canadians of Scottish heritage doesn't include this population, among other Scottish realities.

When we think of Scotland, diversity doesn’t come readily to mind. Yet Italians, many of whose ancestors came to Scotland in the late 19th century, make up a vital and vibrant segment of Scotland’s population -- about 100,000 people in a country of 5 million. They weren’t always welcome and they’ve been persecuted -- but not anymore. Now, Scotland is eagerly embracing and even celebrating its Italian heritage in food fairs, music festivals, neighborhood tours and public events -- to the point of romanticism, as some observers see it.

[. . .]

Fleeing poverty and famine at home in the 1890s, Italians moved eastward to the much richer and more globally powerful British isles. Many Italians ended up in Scotland, rather than England, in order to seek out business opportunities away from crowded marketplaces like London.

“They moved to where they could set up shop,” said Wendy Ugolini, a lecturer in British history at the University of Edinburgh.

Which is precisely what many of them did, opening up small restaurants, ice cream parlors and fish-and-chip outlets. Indeed in 1905, there were 337 Italian-owned cafes and takeout places in Glasgow alone, up from 89 in 1903, according to EducationScotland.

"It could be fairly argued that the Italian community popularized the 'fish supper' in Scotland," Stuart Atkinson, Scottish executive councilor with the National Fish Friers Federation told BBC. “To this day most Scottish towns still have an Italian chippy [fish-and-chip shop].”

However, life for Italo-Scots was not all friendly storefronts and chippies.

Given their somewhat darker features, foreign language and Roman Catholic faith, Italians were perceived by many of the Protestant Scots as unclean and irreligious. People complained publicly that the Italians kept their places of business opened longer than pubs and on the Sabbath. According to reports in the Glasgow Herald newspaper from the early 20th century, some church officials even condemned Italian ice cream shops as “immoral,“ “corrupt” and encouraging licentiousness.