Principles of Repopulation Initiatives for Community Resilience: Understandings Gleaned From the Proposed Scottish Government’s Islands Bond

Depopulation is a concern for many islands and, in response, proposals and policies designed to reverse population loss have been developed in various national contexts. Adopting a community resilience lens, this paper aims to understand what lessons could be learnt from the proposed Scottish Government’s Islands Bond and other initiatives designed to attract new island residents to inform any future repopulation policies targeting sub-national islands. We highlight some of the underlying ambitions of repopulation interventions and the ways in which they contribute to community resilience. We conclude that to be successful as a means of supporting community resilience, repopulation initiatives need to incorporate six underlying Principles of Repopulation Initiatives for Community Resilience. These sit under three key themes: principles of retaining and supporting population and in-migration, place-based principles of initiative design, and principles for measuring success.