‘Spaghetti Lengths in a Bowl’? Recovering Narratives of Not ‘Belonging’ Amongst the Italian Scots

By the close of the twentieth century, the Italian presence in Scotland had become increasingly romanticised and glamorised. This paper illuminates the ways in which Italian immigrants who arrived in significant numbers in the late nineteenth century were subject to racialising discourses, which laid the groundwork for the overt and aggressive manifestations of hostility endured when war was declared between Italy and Britain in 1940. By analysing interwar narratives of childhood ethnicity, this paper illustrates the extent to which the alienation of the war years built upon a pre-existent sense of not ‘belonging’ amongst second generation Italians.