«There’s a Big Differ Between Visiting and Belonging»: ‘Return Migrants’ ‘Impossible Homecoming’ in Twentieth-Century Irish Literature

Abstract

Despite its long history of emigration, Ireland has recently become a land of immigration: immigrants from all over the world, indeed, made the island their new ‘home,’ in particular in the second half of the twentieth century. Significantly, Ireland simultaneously underwent a remarkable wave of return migration. While returning, whether temporarily or permanently, may generate positive feelings associated with returnees’ past, it may conversely cause alienation and outsiderness due to their ‘hybrid’ identity. In their writings, George Moore, Maeve Brennan, Edna O’Brien, and John McGahern vividly explore the ambivalent meaning of ‘home’ for those who return somewhere they still want and/or need to belong, which, however, is not as it used to be prior to their departure. The community’s reaction to their return, moreover, acquires major importance in determining their ‘(impossible) homecoming’: as one of McGahern’s characters remarks, «there’s a big differ between visiting and belonging».