Where are you from?

In the last WCF blog post, Chris talked about how one of the first questions we are often asked when meeting new people is, ‘What do you do?’, pointing out we can be judged, labelled or pigeon-holed on the basis of our answer. Another question we are often asked and can be judged by is ‘Where are you from?’. 

It’s interesting to ask ourselves why we are so intrigued by this fact about people.  Let’s say you’re from Currock in Carlisle, do you identify yourself as being from Currock? From Carlisle? A Cumbrian? A Northerner? English? British? Does this shift depending on context? Do you think people make any assumptions (positive or negative) about you based on the place you live, whether you’ve always lived there, which part of that place you live in? Do you feel you have something in common with people you meet from the same place? 

You might also ask yourself what assumptions you might make about someone, if at all, dependent on where they are from. For example, do you think you are more likely to make friends with someone from the same place as you, or is ‘where they are from’ less likely to matter to you? And what about in a wider community context: does it matter to you if your MP is ‘from’ the place they are representing? Would you prefer it if the star striker for the football team you support is ‘from’ that area? Do you think it is better that teachers, social workers, police etc. are from the communities in which they work – would this enhance their understanding of the people they work with and support, or is their ability to help people about something bigger than that? If so, what other factors are important? This week, Leslie Thomas QC, one of the lawyers representing the Grenfell Tower victims asked how many of the lawyers had lived in a tower block, council estate or social housing, arguing that the lack of diversity in the inquiry could ‘affect confidence and justice’. This point is less about where people are ‘from’ as about whether they can have any true level of understanding of the victims’ situation – and I suspect this may encompass issues of class, race, ethnicity and probably more factors. This is a complex matter. I don’t have any answers to these questions, by the way, but I think it is important we ask ourselves what it is that makes humans truly understand and empathise with other humans. Certainly, in professional contexts (but probably personal ones as well), it is important that we think through what it is about a person’s life experiences, background and current situation that may or may not affect the way they carry out their job working with others – particularly perhaps in the public sector. 

What I do know is that here we feel we are ‘from’ can form a strong part of our identity. If we move away from the place we were born, we may always feel a strong sense of attachment to that place, yet for other people they may be glad to move away and make a home somewhere new. Sometimes we carry a part of a place with us – memories, an accent, links to friends and family who still live there. Across my life I have lived in South Shields, Manchester, Leeds, Newcastle, London, South Cumbria and now North Cumbria. I haven’t lived in the North East for most of my life, but the fact the first 18 years of my life were spent there, and my parents and close family still live there means I have a strong attachment to it. I feel it is part of me. I lost my Geordie accent though somewhere in my teens, and to some people that marks me out as different, not a real Northerner, not really from there. I have lived in Cumbria for 18 years, my daughter was born here, people I care about greatly are here, I love many different parts of the county and I feel happy here, I don’t want to live anywhere else. So I feel I am ‘from’ here as well, though perhaps some Cumbrians would think I can’t say that. In which case I haven’t got a clue where I am ‘from’; I must be ‘from’ many places – other people will have to find a label for me they prefer. 

I believe is that there are many reasons we feel we belong in a place, and this may be related to a time in our lives. Places in which we have spent a period of time, sometimes quite a short one, can have a profound effect on us (happy or sad or a bit of both) and those places can stay with us forever. Understanding our relationship with place is special, as is understanding as professionals how people we work with and deal with might relate to a place. We may work with homeless people in a city, people with no base at all, and yet the life blood of that city might run through them like a river. 

The cultural geographer, Doreen Massey, said that identities of place are ‘fixed, contested, multiple’, and that a ‘static’ view of place is ‘reactionary’ or old fashioned. (Massey, 1994, p.5). What she means by this is that places are constantly changing, and have never really been static or stable. Sometimes, it could be argued, that seeing a place as having a fixed identity can be dangerous – to say only some people ‘belong’ to a place can exclude others, can be elitist. For example, there was a time in the not too distant past that some people thought that people of black and minority ethnic origins did not ‘belong’ in the UK. It was seen as perfectly acceptable by many to put a sign in a window where a room was for rent saying ‘No blacks, no Irish, no dogs’. This can feel a long way from saying that someone doesn’t belong in Cumbria because they weren’t born here, but both do have something to do with our relationship with place. Cumbria has a very high percentage of people identifying as White British: 96.5% was the figure at the last census in 2011. Nationally, the percentage of people from Black and Ethnic Minorities (BME) was 19.5%, compared to 5% in Carlisle. However, this figure had grown at a much higher rate than nationally in the 10 year period before the census: 68.1% growth nationally, compared to 85.2% in Cumbria; 143.4% in Carlisle and 104.1% in Eden (Cumbria Intelligence Observatory, 2011). This is a hunch, but I suspect this figure will be higher since 2011. Race and ethnicity are only some issues that illustrate changing populations, I use this only as an example, But one thing is for sure: places are changing and that creates issues we have to face, sometimes uncomfortably. The identities of places, their deep and well-loved identities are, in my opinion, things we should cherish. Things which are part of the DNA of a place run deep in the places themselves, and within people who love those places. We can have strong affection for many things about a place: the bricks and stones that characterise the buildings; the slang words; the in-jokes; the layers of history; the way a river winds its way through; the sounds that we notice at night when it’s quiet; the memory of laughing all night in the local pub with friends. It is natural we may want to celebrate and protect those things in themselves, and as they in turn form part of our own DNA. However, as the world changes, as people become increasingly mobile, travel further for work, move away, have the entire world at the swipe of a screen on their phone, we obviously need to consider how we all rub along together and allow places to continue to adapt and change. UK society is currently having a difficult conversation with itself about immigration and multiculturalism. The Brexit vote exposed huge issues in our society. Some communities, often working class Northern communities, voted in significant numbers to leave the EU. In Sunderland 61% of people voted to Leave. I went to school in Sunderland, and I ask myself what it is about that community I grew up in which voted so differently from, say, London where I lived for 6 years in the 1990s, where far more people voted Remain. Whatever your view on Brexit, we must surely ask ourselves what these figures tell us about people’s concerns about what they perceive as happening to the places they are from. There are no easy answers, but this is a conversation that is not going to go away any time soon. 

All the places I have lived, and some of which I’ve travelled to or visited, are part of me. I hope I’m welcome here and in other places I may find myself, and I hope to go on sharing special places with others and welcoming people to the place I call home now.  There is no right or wrong answer to any of this, but it is fascinating and, I would argue, necessary in the modern world, to ask ourselves what our relationship is to place and how that place is or isn’t part of our identity. If we are going to keep on asking the question, ‘Where are you from?’, then we need to be aware of the weight of that potential reply. 

References:

Cumbria Intelligence Observatory (2011) Briefing – 2011 Census Key & Quick Statistics – Equality Data http://www.cumbria.gov.uk/eLibrary/Content/Internet/536/642/1750/4130310250.pdf 

[accessed 12 December, 2017]

Massey, D. (1994) Space, Place and Gender Cambridge: Polity Press