Young Migrant Narratives: Ontological Security, Identity, and Belonging in Scotland: Collaging Identity and Ontological Security (Routledge Advances in Sociology)

This book explores how young adult migrants in Scotland navigate everyday life through processes of ontological security-seeking, revealing how identity is negotiated in relation to experiences of uncertainty, perceived difference, and political narrative. Drawing on narrative interviews and creative arts methods, it builds a counter-archive of lived experience to examine how macro-narratives of Scottish distinctiveness shape, stabilise, and constrain migrant belonging.The book identifies four key coping mechanisms: minimising racism, performing the “good migrant,” adopting Scottish signifiers, and negotiating biographical self-narratives.It shows how these operate as forms of narrative affirmation.By returning to the micro-level foundations of ontological security theory, it reconceptualises security as cyclical, fragile, and dependent on interpretive labour rather than as a fixed and stable end state. Situated at the intersection of migration studies, political sociology, identity st