Forgotten migrants: Irish women religious in England, 1930s–1960s

Abstract

AbstractIn the post‐independence period, as emigration rates increased and the population of Ireland continued to decline, the number of women entering religious life rose substantially, reaching a peak in the late 1960s. Many of these women lived some or all of their lives outside Ireland. However, despite the recent growth of Irish migration or diaspora studies, very little attention has been given to the role or experiences of women religious, who themselves tend not to publish subjective accounts. Based on oral history testimonies, this article seeks to explore the experience of migration for a sample of women who left Ireland to live in religious congregations in England between the 1930s and the 1960s. Growing up in the newly established Irish state, Catholicism was a fundamental part of being Irish for these women. Post‐migration, the women's experience of Irishness was influenced both by their choice of congregation (none of which were Irish in origin) and the wider society in which those congregations were placed. Focusing on the experiences of two groups of women – those who entered congregations with a majority Irish population, and those who entered a middle‐class English congregation whose population was at most a third Irish – this article examines the space that was available within religious life for expressions of ethnicity and Irishness. Situated within the context of the second ‘great wave’ of Irish emigration, it examines the complex processes of inclusion and exclusion (being othered and othering) that occurred within the ‘diaspora space’ of religious community and English society. Religious life during this period was organised according to a strict code of rules and was especially designed to facilitate its transcendence over individual identities, including ethnicity. Notwithstanding this, however, and as this article will argue, ethnicity for the women of this study remained deeply significant within religious life and helped shape their experience of it. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.