Johan Persson

Name: Johan Persson
Age: 47
Born: Gothenburg, Sweden
Lived in Scotland: 12 years

Johan Persson moved to Scotland in 1993 and now lives in Glasgow with his wife and seven-year-old daughter.

Since moving to Scotland, Johan has had a number of jobs and in addition to spending time working in the retail sector he has also worked as a taxi driver – a job, which helped to give him a real insight into Scotland and its people. Johan now works as a customer service agent for Indigo Lighthouse – a Glasgow-based outsourcing company.

Johan said:

"I trained and worked as an electronics engineer in Gothenburg and set up my own business. However, I took the decision to leave for Scotland in the early nineties when Sweden was hit by a major recession, making it nearly impossible to run a business.

"I chose Scotland as my wife is from Glasgow. We met when we were both working in Crete and although we returned to Gothenburg, we had always discussed the possibility of living in Scotland.

"It didn't take long for me to find a job in Scotland. That is actually one of the things I love about this country.  If you want to work you can find a job without any problem. There are so many opportunities here and I've been very lucky with the work that I've had to date.

"The majority of my work has been in customer-service-related roles and I spent three years working as a taxi driver in Glasgow. I thoroughly enjoyed being a 'cabbie' and I certainly met plenty of interesting people, but it was the unsociable hours, which finally convinced me to return to a nine-to-five job.

"I'm now working as a customer service agent for Indigo Lighthouse, which works with companies across Europe and Scandinavia. It's a great job and there is a wide mix of people from various countries working for the company.

"There are obvious cultural differences between Sweden and Scotland. In Sweden it would be considered rude to drop in on someone unannounced but that's certainly not the case in Scotland. People here are extremely friendly and I've found it to be a lovely place in which to live.

"I must admit, despite having been here for 15 years I haven't seen as much of Scotland as I would've liked but that's something that I plan to address in the coming years."

Information correct at June 2007