Tales from the Fifth Green Field: The Psychodynamics of Migration, Masculinity and National Identity amongst Republic of Ireland Soccer Supporters in England

Abstract

Based on qualitative research on Irish soccer supporters in England in the 1990s it is argued that these supporters' substantial devotions of time, emotion, imagination and money were psychic investments through which international soccer became a symbolic means of negotiating the contingency and vicissitudes of emigrant Irish national identity. However, this projected symbolism was inevitably contradictory. While collective gathering and drinking created a ‘liminal’ space through which individual lives' spatio-temporal coordinates and uneven migrant biographies temporarily dissolved in rituals of national identification, these were inextricably intertwined with the construction and reconstruction of masculine identities, entailing occasions for both ‘bonding’ and internal mutual differentiation and disputes arising from disagreements regarding supporters' origins and commitment. These were particularly significant for ‘second generation Irish’ supporters whose ‘Irishness’ was predicated on unambiguous masculine identity and continuity despite familial histories of migration, but whose ‘credentials’ as such were repeatedly questioned.