ABSTRACT
Globally, migration has been associated with fears of ‘the other’, of terrorism, urban unrest and the spread of organised crime. Criminological work on race, ethnicity, crime and justice in the UK has been dominated by the largely English experience of police racism, racist violence and successive processes of criminalisation. Scotland’s different history has been associated with perceptions of greater equality and tolerance. Nonetheless, this reputation contains an element of mythology (de Lima 2005) and Scotland has not been free of racist and ethnically motivated violence and the criminalisation of some immigrant groups. This chapter will explore these issues, focusing, largely for reasons of space, on race and ethnicity, while recognising their complex interrelationship with issues of sectarianism and faith. The chapter will start by briefly outlining patterns of immigration in Scotland and providing an overview of issues of race, ethnicity and crime. Racist violence and victimisation in Scotland will then be explored along with policing and responses to terrorism before discussing the distinctiveness of the Scottish experience.
