Welshness in ‘British Wales’: negotiating national identity at the margins

Abstract

Popular interpretations of national identity often focus on the unifying qualities of nationhood. However, societies frequently draw hierarchical distinctions between the people and places who are ‘most national’, and those who are ‘least national’. Little attention is paid to these marginal places within the nation and the experiences of their inhabitants. This article helps to address this by analysing the ‘less Welsh’ British Wales region of Wales, a country that has traditionally possessed a hierarchical, regionally constituted nationhood. The article studies the British Wales region both ‘from above’ – considering how some areas develop as ‘less national’ – and ‘from below’, introducing empirical ethnographic work into ‘everyday Welshness’ in this area. Whilst previous work on hierarchical nationhood focuses on how hierarchies are institutionalized by the state, this article demonstrates how people at the margins of the nation actively negotiate their place in the nation. Whilst people in this area expressed a strong Welshness, they also struggled to place themselves in the nation because they had internalized their lowly place within the national hierarchy. The article demonstrates the importance of place and social class for national identity construction and draws attention to the role of power in the discursive construction of hierarchical nationhood.

Ecological social capital does not predict geographical variance in increases in depression following the 2008 financial crisis

“…These two models had the same randomeffects structure: random intercepts of sex, age band, MSOA, and local authority (22 county council areas); and random slopes of Welsh-speaking for each MSOA and local authority. The random slopes were included because being a Welsh speaker was expected to vary in its demographic correlates and cultural significance across Wales (Balsom, 1985;Evans, 2019). For trust, fixed effects of population density, proportion of residents with no formal qualifications, and proportion of married residents were used as area-level predictors; for belonging, fixed effects of density, proportion of unpaid carers, and proportion of married residents were used.…”

Reclaiming authenticity: The spaces and scales of national sincerity

“…Numerous authors have argued that there are many, equally valid, ways of being Welsh and, significantly, that these can be practised differently in different parts of Wales (e.g. Evans, 2019; Jones and Fowler, 2007). This sensibility has underpinned the education system in Wales in recent years.…”

Health and Mental Health Disparities Between National Identity Groups in Wales

“…Here, Welsh identity is tied to speaking Welsh and, in political terms, to support for Plaid Cymru, the Welsh nationalist party who, in the 2016 Welsh Assembly elections, won all five constituencies in Y Fro Gymraeg but only one outside it. British Wales covers the remainder of the country and, along with support for the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties, is associated with a less confident Welsh identity [ 11 ] relative to the previous two areas, which have competing claims to heartland status—Wales’ ‘two truths’ as Raymond Williams put it [ 12 ]. Thus, in Wales, competing forms of Welshness sit alongside each other, as well as British, English and other identities.…”

“…Welsh identity has been studied in its own right [ 9 , 11 ] and from the perspective of electoral politics [ 10 , 13 ], but, to date, not from the perspective of public health. However, there is ample reason to expect health disparities as a function of national identity in Wales.…”

“…However, there is ample reason to expect health disparities as a function of national identity in Wales. Firstly, the various Welsh identities proposed in the Three-Wales Model are highly classed, with working classness integral to Welsh Wales identity [11], while it has a more complex relationship with Welsh-speaking Welsh identities [14]. Social gradients are the rule rather than the exception in health [15], so those holding such classed identities may be at greater risk of poor health.…”