There's a 'Kinder surprise' . . .

.This is a book about movement. It’s enlightening, evocative, impactful.

The success of Testimonies of Transition is three-fold: the theme, the interviewer/editor and the voices of the immigrants/emigrants themselves. I wasn't expecting that when I first started listening to the book we get to hear the immigrants' own voices. Wonderful. That's the 'Kinder Surprise'.

Humans have immigrated for millennia. In hunter gatherer societies it was straightforward you followed a food source. In more settled agrarian and industrial societies reasons for immigration became more nuanced. Not all immigration is by choice: poverty, religious or ethnic differences, conflict, natural disasters are not uncommon 'motivators'.

In Marjory Harper's volume reasons included the Scottish climate as well the the 'gray-ness' of post-war Britain, educational opportunities, my best friend was leaving, my spouse got a job in X or Y, as well as more opportunities for children.

Marjory Harper, who travelled the world to interview Scots who had lived or were living abroad, is everything you'd want in an interviewer: unobtrusive, impartial, a good listener. Like a good chair of a meeting she is both an enabler and catalyst. She sat back and gave her subjects voice. There was clearly a great rapport between the narrator and her subjects. None of the interviews 'fell flat'.

The voices crossed generations, crossed continents, crossed professions, crossed experiences. We heard of their own or their adopted country's changing values and enduring values; enduring cultures and changing cultures; accepted norms and changing norms. And their own conflicted feelings of which society do I belong to? Most of the interviewees remained abroad. Some did return to Scotland.

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