Expanding Scottish State Institutions and Foreignness, 1914–39: Managing ‘Aliens’ in the ‘Scottish Way’

By 1914, then, state institutions with a specifically Scottish jurisdiction and remit, located mostly in Edinburgh, had a whole range of powers over matters such as those related to crime, poor relief and public health. The Aliens Act of 1905 had not only instituted a more effective state control of entry into Britain but also began a period of ever-increasing documentary surveillance and administrative management of the alien presence. As the nature of control and definition of boundaries became more systematic and centralised at a UK level, however, it was also apparent that the Scottish machinery of state was striving to elaborate and assert in some way the distinctiveness of its approach and engagement with foreignness. Firstly, in the implementation of tougher UK controls on entry and residence there was a distinct engagement with the ‘alien’ concept and with aliens themselves. Secondly, migrants experienced in their lives, as many other residents of Scotland did, the significantly enhanced authority, confidence and complexity of the Scottish machinery of government in the period when, as a functioning part of a World War I British welfare state, it expanded the direct state responsibility for the provision of housing, health care, education and social welfare.