Highland history is full of accounts of migration but they all relate to trauma and loss: Clearances; emigration; multiple local migrations on account of clearance; seasonal migrations for work or education.  The positive importance of in-migration in every generation is completely overlooked.  Since the ice receded 10,000 years ago at the end of The Ice Age intrepid, imaginative, energetic people have made their way northwards into Mackay Country and made a home in some corner of this beautiful but belligerent landscape.  It takes a special kind of person to look upon those scraps of soil and tireless westerlies - and to see in these things possibilities which are worth the toil.  The first comers rounded headlands in a coracle or trekked through glens and over beallachs (mountain pass), sleeping in bough tents covered in animal hide until they came upon some friendly flow, machair pasture or sheltered strath which fitted their need for food, fish, water and shelter.  In current times kayaks and mountain bikes are more likely to be part of the migrants’ bundle than a bough tent, but that ebb and flow persists.  In the very many generations in between people have made that northerly migration for work, for land, for love, for fish, for family, for sheep, for art and for business.  Some stay a while; some stay forever.  These people have given Mackay Country new businesses, new employees, an ever expanding skills set, different ideas, millions of hours of voluntary service to the local communities, people to fight for schools and services.  In more private moments these are also people who mark and mourn the passing of things dear – but equally - people intent on making the very best they can of what is available for now and for the future.  Our recent research has sought to explore the in-migrants’ stories through oral history recordings.  The stories are very varied.  Here we focus on some of those who moved in on account of jobs with in art and education.  

 

The Ebb and Flow:

Inwards and Outwards Migration in Mackay Country

 

Introduction

 

The history of the Gaidhealtachd is a history of movement.  In the earliest times people settled on these shores.  Wave after wave brought a range of settlers and cultures over the centuries.  Until recently the sea was the main transport route and the settlements on the northern and western edges of the mainland bordered that trunk route, linking Scandanavia and the Baltic with the Mediterranean and Africa. 

 

During the 18th and 19th centuries out-migration became the dominant theme as individuals and sometimes whole communities left for southern industrial cities or for what they called the ‘New World’.  In the late 20th century in-migration once again became significant.  At the same time awareness of the global aspects of Gaidhealtachd culture have been strengthened through modern communications.  The Gaidhealtachd diaspora has resulted in communities in Canada, USA, Australia and New Zealand which share language, music and oral history.  Over time these cultural groups have diverged and yet they continue to share common themes and a sense of connectedness. 

 

As a research topic migration is uniquely inclusive.  Everyone either has family who emigrated out of Mackay Country or family who emigrated into Mackay Country.  Some families have both.  This makes it an ideal topic for a community based research and heritage project. 

 

Theoretical Approach

 

The work of Said, Spivak and Bhabha highlights issues of identity, social agency, ‘translation’ and social and cultural hybridity.  Migration studies has a great deal to gain from an interdisciplinary approach.  Work on migration has tended to maintain a positivist approach long after other disciplines had embraced the impacts of ‘the cultural turn’ in social theory.  For both policy purposes and community based action statistical information at a range of scales of enquiry is very important for the Highlands and islands, particularly since there is often difficulty in accessing relevant statistics at an appropriate scale.  However the potential policy applications and explanatory power of quantitative data on migration has often been extremely limited through privileging positivist methods.  In the context of the Mackay Country region there are two key areas with much to offer – cultural theory and development studies. 

 

Theorisation of hybridity helps enormously in tackling the complex social relations involved in migration of all kinds – out migration, return migration and counter-urbanisation.  In the Mackay Country area consideration of migration impacts within the region have often tended to become embroiled in definitions of ‘local’ and ‘incomer’ and permutations thereof.  Consideration of hybridity shows how such terms are not absolute but relative and serves to illustrate the ways in which these terms are often mobilised in the course of struggles over resources and social position.  Just as a person is likely to be not only ‘a woman’ but simultaneously a daughter and/ or sister, aunt and so on – cultural identity is fractured by gender, language, religion, ethnicity, class and so on.  The mobilisation of terms like ‘local’ and ‘incomer’ often occurs to assert or refute a right to speak or be heard and to create, maintain or dismantle a sense of belonging in opposition to counter claims. 

 

Spivak’s focus on issues of translation goes to the heart of Gaidhealtachd issues concerning not just culture but very importantly – language too.  Even when focusing on contemporary circumstances the weight of the past is felt in the present in terms of things like settlement patterns, cultural mores, uneven economic development and jurisprudence.  Spivak asserts that “one has to perceive that every translation – necessary but impossible – is also impossible.  In fact a translation is always an imperfect solution of a problem – as is the original in another way.”  This tension contributes to the complications of migration impacts since the historic interactions between fractured Gaidhealtachd and non-Gaidhealtachd cultural groups created a historic inability to ‘speak’ ‘in Gaelic’.  This effect Spivak summarises as the impossibility of the (hybrid) subaltern ever being ‘heard’.  These approaches have much to offer the unravelling of migration issues within the Mackay Country.  Attention to this sort of theory greatly improves the explanatory power of work in this area while making it significantly easier to develop effective policies. 

 

Development Studies have a related but different relevance.  Work in the Peruvian Andes in the 1980s highlighted the fact that in the mountain villages those who stayed had to have or develop a particular skills set to survive and /or thrive but also noted that return migrants brought back a different but complimentary skills set.  This mixture of skills, where return migration occurred had very positive impacts in terms of economic development.  In-migration or counter-urbanisation was not dealt with in that particular study but the implications are relevant for that too.  Another relevant example is the way in which in parts of Canada active promotion of in-migration was used as a development tool.  Development Studies has tended to engage with the politics of the ‘development industry’ which is of enormous relevance to Mackay Country.  In policy terms the Highlands and Islands have long been defined as a ‘problem region’.  This is significant in terms of how development happens and who decides what constitutes appropriate and sustainable development.  International comparisons would be fruitful.