Personal narratives of family and ethnic identity: Orangewomen in Scotland and England, c. 1940-2010

Using interviews with ten Orangewomen from England and Scotland, this article analyses how women could articulate a sense of ethnic identity through membership of the Orange Order during the second half of the twentieth century. What emerged from their reflections was a sense of how Irish Protestant identity interacted with, and was shaped by, Scottish, English and British identities. This article argues that these women¿s identity was rooted, for most, in a family background in Scotland and Ireland, which was strongly intertwined with their membership of the Orange Order. The example of the female Orange Order demonstrates that identities can be formed through the close interplay of family and ethnic associational life, suggesting ways in which historians of migration might further explore the interaction of migrants¿ public and private lives.