The Importance of demographic process in assembling coastal communities: Three case studies from North East Scotland

The world’s coastal regions are increasingly valued by society with a large proportion of the global population living by sea. Population geography and demographers have been critiqued for their seemingly limited engagement with coastal and marine planning. However, through the emerging discourse of the ‘Social Coast’, there is opportunity to understanding the complex social and demographic processes that shape coastal places. Whilst providing vital contribution to the social evidences bases required under the EU Directive on Maritime Spatial Planning 2014/89/EU.
This Paper will present the preliminary findings from three Case Studies from Scotland’s North East and Moray Coasts: Peterhead, Banff and Cruden Bay. These three case studies are used to explore the relationship between demographic processes and understandings of change in coastal places. The broad theme of ‘Mobility’ provides a particular focus for discussion.
Using an Assemblage thinking approach provides new perspectives to how we understand the coastal population spaces and change within them. Assemblage theory challenges other theoretical positions such as structuralism. Structuralism propagates dichotomous thinking such as urban/rural in which the coastal is often considered a rural and therefore a subject of the periphery. In the trans-local approach promoted by assemblage thinking we show how mobility across and between scales affect coastal places, across the three case studies. The paper concludes with broader understandings of ‘how’ the relations between coastal spaces and their populations are co-produced through relations of exteriority.