Community

Host community adults were asked to talk about their own histories: their families, their childhood days, the houses they lived in, the streets they played in, their school experience and their working lives. In the course of the interviews, they often compared their own experience of growing up with that of their young asylum seeker interviewers. So, at times, the interviews became conversations exploring similarities and differences between a Glasgow childhood and one spent in Turkey or Iran or Congo.

Inevitably, a lot of the discussions dealt with the quality of communities. There were generational contrasts here, as people compared past and present and reflected on what makes a good community. But there was also the chance to get opinions about a more recent contrast: Greater Pollok before and since the arrival of asylum seekers.