Bordering on Britishness 1927-2017

Canessa, Andrew (2019). Bordering on Britishness 1927-2017. [Data Collection]. Colchester, Essex: UK Data Archive. 10.5255/UKDA-SN-852694

Gibraltar’s border with Spain is one of the most contentious border issues within the European Union. Gibraltar continues to be a major issue in Anglo-Spanish relations and at its very heart are the Gibraltarians who articulate a clear identity which is often passionate in denying any Spanish identity. This sense of being Gibraltarian, British and not being Spanish has not, however, been an unvarying constant over time.
There is no doubt that it is the attitudes of the Gibraltarians which are at the centre of the issue of sovereignty and yet it is remarkable how little Gibraltarians attitudes to themselves and their Spanish neighbours has been studied. Gibraltarians sense of who they are is consequently poorly understood and often reduced to a caricature of expatriate Britons.
This research project will conduct extensive oral history interviews with at least 400 residents of Gibraltar (with a small sample from across the border) focusing on three key aspects which underline the process of identity formation: (1)the border, (2)ethnicity and religion, (3)language.
Interviews will be conducted in English, Spanish, yanito (the local dialect), and Moroccan Arabic. The period covered will be from before WWII to the present day.

Data description (abstract)

Bordering on Britishness is an oral history project on Gibraltarian identity funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council in association with the Garrison Library of Gibraltar (Govt. of Gibraltar) and the University of Essex. The project run for three and a half years and collected 331 oral histories from a wide range of people resident in Gibraltar and a smaller sample of people resident in Spain of Spanish origin. Interviews were conducted in English, Spanish, Italian and Moroccan Arabic. These oral histories vary in length from just under an hour to over four hours in length. The average length of interview was just under two hours. People were free to choose which language (or combination thereof) they wished to use in order to capture the way Gibraltarians speak (often switching between languages) as well as test the hypothesis that identity might be expressed differently depending on which language is used.
The main object of the research was to trace changing Gibraltarian identities across the twentieth century and into the twenty first.
Bordering on Britishness presented its findings in a final conference in Gibraltar on the 24th and 25th of February 2017, also available on the project website.

Data creators:

Creator Name	Affiliation	ORCID (as URL)
Canessa Andrew	University of Essex

Sponsors:

Economic and Social Research Council

Grant reference:

ES/K006223/1

Topic classification:

Politics
History
Society and culture

Keywords:

gibraltar, british history, borders (frontiers), community identification, spain

Project title:

Bordering on Britishness

Grant holders:

Andrew Canessa

Project dates:

From	To
13 September 2013	30 April 2017

Date published:

13 Oct 2017 15:37

Last modified:

08 May 2019 09:56

Coverage and Methodology

Temporal coverage:

From	To
1 January 1927	31 March 2017

Collection period:

Date from:	Date to:
1 January 2014	1 May 2017

Geographical area:

Gibraltar and La Linea

Country:

Gibraltar, Spain

Spatial unit:

No Spatial Unit

Data collection method:

Observation units: Individuals and Groups

Method of data collection: Semi-structured Face-to-face interviews, Focus groups. In-depth surveys.

Kind of data: Audio, textual, videos, images

Universe: People aged 16-101 years, living in Gibraltar and La Línea. A totally of 416 people were interviewed or surveyed.

The current population of Gibraltar is 33,000. Of these approximately 24,000 were either born in Gibraltar, married to Gibraltarians, of have resided for a significant period of time in Gibraltar. The project did not determine who was or was not Gibraltarian and left it to the interviewees to declare their own identity (which was sometimes multiple). Approximately 15% of this population was surveyed by the project.

Sampling procedures: Volunteer sample: volunteers were invited to participate. 85 of the subjects surveyed were under the age of 18 and received consent from parents and their school to participate. This was achieved under the condition of absolute anonymity and that their individual responses would not be archived.

Class: A serious attempt was made to make sure there was a representative distribution across class. This, however, proved to be very difficult because of exceptional class mobility in Gibraltar over the period surveyed. Nevertheless there was a serious attempt to ensure that there were representative samples from elite and non elite social groups by social status background.

There were 48 interviews conducted with people born in Spain; 197 born in Gibraltar and 35 in the UK; 16 in Morocco and 3 in India. One person was born in each of Israel , Hungary, Egypt, Irelanda, Pakistan, Kenya, Portugal, Canada, The Netherlands. 22 did not say where they were born.

Religious/ethnic minorities: Jews, Moroccan Muslims and Hindus were interviewed. We ensured that there was a least one RA from each of these. The largest of these groups represents 3% of the targeted population. These groups were thus oversampled in order to get sufficient representation within the groups; to ensure that these hitherto underrepresented groups were sufficiently represented; and to explore the nuances of identity in Gibraltar by a thorough sample of those with a ‘marked’ identity.

Age: There was not an even distribution across age representative of the population as older people were privileged in the sample since the major focus of the project was to get an oral history of Gibraltar. Nevertheless, there were sample interviews across all age groups. For obvious reasons, however, oral history interviews tended to be longer with older people than younger. 84 people under the age were surveyed. This is an overrepresentation of this age group and was done through schools but they were surveyed rather than have their life stories recorded.

Gender: There is an almost equal distribution of gender across all ethnic/religious/class categories: 47% women and 53% men.

Method of data collection: Semi-structured Face-to-face interviews, Focus groups. In-depth surveys.

Number of units: 337 people were interviewed and an additional 85 people under the age of 18 we subject to an in depth survey. 303 interview recordings undertaken in Gibraltar and La Línea are deposited. Formats are MP3 and WAV. 303 Oral History interview transcripts of recordings undertaken in Gibraltar and La Línea are deposited in word format.

Observation unit:

Individual, Household, Group

Kind of data:

Text, Still image, Audio, Video

Type of data:

Qualitative and mixed methods data

Resource language:

English, Spanish, Moroccan Arabic, French, Italian

Access and Administration

Data sourcing, processing and preparation:

Audio recordings converted into text. Transcriptions instructions, guidelines and interview template were created to ensure quality and consistency. The transcriptions include: A unique identifier, a uniform and consistent layout throughout, a header with details e.g. date, place, interviewer name and interviewee details. For multilingual interviews, full transcriptions in the original language has been produced. Arabic interviews were translated into English. A glossary of llanito words and a list of places in Gibraltar was produced. Anonymisation: Informed consent was collected in writing to share personal data. Where permission was not granted, the basic level of anonymisation was applied; replacing real names, and direct identifiers e.g. age, home addresses, and profession with pseudonyms. Some interviews required a higher level of anonymisation, therefore school and work places were also replaced. For interviews where consent forms were ambiguous, unclear, or no option selected, the name, age and home addresses of main respondent was changed. For embargoed interviews a pseudonym was given so it could be added to the datalist. Issues encountered when obtaining consent: In general there was no problem in obtaining consent. Some people withdrew consent after the interview or changed their consent in terms of anonymisation. Where consent was withdrawn, data have not been included. A number of people speaking on issues of a sensitive nature asked for their data to be embargoed.

Rights owners:

Name	Affiliation	ORCID (as URL)
Canessa Andrew	University of Essex

Contact:

Name	Email	Affiliation	ORCID (as URL)
Canessa, Andrew	canessa@essex.ac.uk	University of Essex	Unspecified

Notes on access:

The Data Collection is available for download to users registered with the UK Data Service. All requests are subject to the permission of the data owner or his/her nominee. Please email the contact person for this data collections to request permission to access the data, explaining your reason for wanting access to do the data. Once permission is obtained, please forward this to the ReShare administrator.

Publisher:

UK Data Archive

Last modified:

08 May 2019 09:56

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Bordering on Britishness: An oral history study of Gibraltarian identity over the 20th century

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