Chapter Coping Mechanisms, Narrative Repair, and Ontological Security

Overview & Synopsis

This book explores how young adult migrants in Scotland navigate everyday life through processes of ontological security-seeking, revealing how identity is negotiated in relation to experiences of uncertainty, perceived difference, and political narrative. Drawing on narrative interviews and creative arts methods, it builds a counter-archive of lived experience to examine how macro-narratives of Scottish distinctiveness shape, stabilise, and limit migrant belonging. This book identifies four key coping mechanisms: minimising racism, performing the “good migrant,” adopting Scottish signifiers, and negotiating biographical self-narratives. It shows how these operate as forms of narrative affirmation. By returning to the micro-level foundations of ontological security theory, it reconceptualises security as cyclical, fragile, and dependent on interpretive labour rather than as a fixed and stable end state. Situated at the intersection of migration studies, political sociology, identity studies, and security studies, this book will be of interest to scholars and students of international relations, human geography, nationalism studies, and critical migration research. It will also appeal to those engaged in debates on belonging, minority rights, and the politics of everyday life in contemporary Europe.