Ask a blunt question, get a blunt answer.
What a missed opportunity from BBC Scotland to tell us something we don’t already know.
This week’s poll on Scottish attitudes towards immigration seemed designed to do one thing: generate a set of headlines. It certainly generated little insight into what people in Scotland think about immigration to Scotland.
Despite being headlined Welcome to Scotland? the poll chose not to ask this pretty fundamental question. Instead, it asked what people in Scotland think about immigration to the UK. (Generally speaking, do you think the level of immigration into Britain should be…?)
Why not ask people in Scotland what we think about immigration to Scotland? Doesn’t the BBC think that people in Scotland can hold different opinions about immigration to Scotland versus immigration to other parts of the UK?
Perceptions vs reality
Asking for people’s views about immigration to the UK rather than to Scotland shifts the question away from a reflection of people’s lived experiences of immigration – their encounters and relationships with immigrants as friends, neighbours and colleagues – and into the realm of people’s perceptions of immigration. Perceptions which may well have been shaped by hostile political debate and media coverage, ramped up to the hilt as we approach the general election.
Another question asked: On balance, do you think the level of immigration into Britain over the last 10 years has been good or bad for the country?
Good or bad for which country? There are many distinct features of life in Scotland that may affect how we view immigration to Scotland: differing skills gaps, different levels of diversity and different levels of population density are just some. The BBC poll skirted over these issues, as if nothing matters more than blunt, emotional reactions to blunt, emotionally loaded questions.
And how did the pollsters define ‘immigration’ to those polled? Who are we talking about when we talk about immigration? Foreign students? International academics and surgeons? Professionals from EU member states? Jobseekers from across the EU? Refugees seeking protection under the UN convention? Victims of trafficking for sexual and domestic exploitation? The poll appears to have lumped all these people together under the broadest term: ‘immigrants’.
Asking people for their opinions on how each of these groups separately have contributed to Scotland (or in this case the UK) might, once again, yield more interesting, more nuanced, more useful and more accurate insights into what people in Scotland really think.
But all this was missed.
And yet BBC Scotland has still managed to generate two days (and counting!) of stories across web, TV and radio from the poll. Scheduled to run two months before the general election, discussion of immigration, no matter how clumsy, is destined to raise the temperature on this issue.
We’re talking about people here
Everyone knows that immigration is a political football. Everyone knows that immigration stories will always generate a cheap headline or heated phone-in debate. But immigration is also about more than this. It is about people’s lives. At Scottish Refugee Council we see people every day who come under that clumsy, blunt term, immigrant. These are people whose lives have been shattered. Families from Syria with hopes and dreams that their kids will grow up free from torture, exploitation and persecution.That their kids will grow up at all.
The BBC raises the question of whether people in Scotland share the views of our elected representatives about immigration. Perhaps the real question we need to ask is how far this poll reflects the views of the people of Scotland at all.
