What I wish I’d known when I first arrived

Marzanna Antoniak shares her journey from feeling isolated as a new migrant in Scotland to finding belonging in Govanhill through volunteering, multilingual initiatives, and community connections, highlighting the power of inclusive spaces, and multilingual initiatives in fostering belonging and community.

By Marzanna Antoniak | Seán Casey

I’ve always felt a sense of curiosity about other cultures and already in secondary school was thinking up plans to leave Poland, explore a new land and make a life for myself there. 

In summer 2008, by pure chance, I ended up migrating to Scotland, barely speaking any English. I lived in a Polish household here and all my information came from a website for the Polish diaspora. I didn’t know any local groups or organisations, nor did I believe I could possibly join one with my broken English. 

At work, I was mainly speaking Polish with my compatriots and Russian with some Latvians. At college, I was practising English with people like me, who were new to this country and had a rather limited command of the mainstream language. I’m not even mentioning my attempts to understand native Scots. 

It took me almost two years to make my first UK-born friend. And for quite some time I thought of Scottish people as friendly, but not friends. 

I remember feeling quite isolated from local life and deprived of opportunities to practise English with native speakers. One day, I asked my college teacher whether he knew of any groups I could join or volunteer with – and learned there were many. Right away, I started volunteering with organisations where I finally had a chance to mingle with Scots. It sometimes felt like throwing myself in at the deep end, but after attending a few training sessions conducted in the Scottish accent, my language competence soared and I soon began feeling fairly confident in an office environment. 

I wish my teachers – the only local people in my life at the time – had been more proactive about informing me of such opportunities. It would have helped me master English at a much faster pace and I’d have been able to make better use of my skills and all the energy that I was bursting with. Without easy access to information and separated from the host community by an invisible barrier it is easy to get stuck. But once I opened the doors to the local world, I gradually began feeling more and more at home in my adopted country. 

Having spent eight years working in Govanhill, with all the multicultural shops, projects and organisations operating here, I like to believe that had I lived in this very neighbourhood when I was new to Scotland, the sense of belonging would have filled me much sooner.  

I was appointed Govanhill’s community connector just months before Covid-19 we went into lockdown. Amidst all the uncertainty, confusion and misleading rumours, ensuring that vital information reached residents became every organisation’s key priority. Dedicated multilingual helplines were  created where residents could call for support in their native tongues. Over 70 people volunteered to translate local service providers’ information. We produced a pictorial guide to local services. Local social media accounts exploded with content providing information and debunking myths in different community languages. 

Covid-19 made it clear that a variety of channels were needed to meet our multicultural and transient community’s needs. The Govanhill Community Engagement and Information Strategy recommends that highly visual and multilingual content such as infographics, posters, audio and video messaging, both online and in the public realm, should be a constant feature in Govanhill. The strategy also endorses creating spaces where people would be made to feel welcome even before entering them. This can be achieved by using multilingual signage, appealing visuals, and the residents being greeted by people with whom they have something in common, be it age, culture, language, or something else. 

I’ve seen several initiatives that have made a real difference to how local people access information and opportunities. They include volunteering and employability support and peer education programmes where residents are trained to pass on information to their communities in their native languages. The introduction of link workers at the local medical practice and in local schools has also made a positive impact.

What Govanhill has that not all the other neighbourhoods have is the proximity of so many service providers of various kinds. It is much easier to sort your issues when you can just walk a few minutes away from your home and meet a housing or energy officer face-to-face. There are also community groups operating in residents’ languages, youth clubs, activities for children, events for all tastes. You can get advice and you can be referred to local organisations. 

All of this makes the newcomers’ experience much less intimidating. The existence of Greater Govanhill – a free, locally distributed, multilingual magazine plays a big role, too.