“Leaving Ireland is easy. It’s going home that’s hard”:1 The Barriers to Return for Irish Emigrants

Abstract

In 1995, President Mary Robinson in her ground-breaking speech entitled “Cherishing the Irish Diaspora” evoked the importance of reaching out to Ireland’s vast global community. From this time, initiatives, which would eventually lead to the formation of an Irish diaspora strategy, began to emerge as successive Irish governments entered into dialogue with the diaspora. In 2015 a strategy document entitled Global Irish: Ireland’s Diaspora Policy contained specific commitments to examining issues affecting Irish people abroad but also included those Irish emigrants seeking to return home. Researchers have tended to mainly focus on the reasons why people left Ireland and how they adapted to their lives once in their host country and on the exchanges and links between the island and its diaspora. There is a paucity of research on recent return migration to Ireland and the difficulties that can be encountered today.