Irish Migrants Research Articles

Scottish national identities among inter-war migrants in North America and Australasia

Interpretations of Scottish identities have for too long been immersed in an inward-looking or domestic perspective. Where constructions of migrant identities exist they too have been influenced by developments about identity within Scotland, specifically a focus on Highlandism, by a disproportionate concentration on the Scots in Canada, and by exclusion of the twentieth-century migrant experience. This article examines the personal testimonies of Scots in several destinations and argues that they manifested a striking range of external and internal manifestations of their national identities. Unlike Irish migrants, however, whose cultural institutions served a dual purpose, allowing their identities to be proclaimed and engaging in active pursuit of political objectives, the major construction of Scottishness was internalised. Furthermore, visible expressions of Scottish identities did not generate disapproval from the public at large that the assertion of Irish identities occasionally excited. Despite its relative invisibility this sense of being Scottish was powerful and dynamic and shows a Scottish world coexisting within a British one.

Curious Streets

The psychological journey of migration is far longer than the geographical one.1 At the peak of his career in the mid-1980s, Desmond Hogan was being compared to Salman Rushdie and Kazuo Ishiguro2 a...

Migrancy, Performativity And Autobiographical Identity

The tradition of autobiographical writing by Irish migrants in Britain is amorphous, diverse, fragmentary and difficult to trace.1 Although distinct Irish enclaves have existed in British towns and...

Sisters of the brotherhood: female Orangeism on Tyneside in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries

The two ‘great unknowns’ of Irish migration history, women and Protestants, have received deserved attention in the decade or so since Donald Akenson first drew attention to them as lacunae in an otherwise growing field of scholarly concern. A review of the literature, however, demonstrates that Irish women have benefited more than Protestants from recent research. Despite pioneering efforts, much of the work on the non-Catholic dimension tends to be general or indicative in approach, with little of the depth and range now associated with Irish women’s experiences of migration.

:Franco-Irish Relations, 1500-1610: Politics, Migration, and Trade

The period 1500 to 1610 witnessed a fundamental transformation in the nature of Franco-Irish relations. In 1500 contact was exclusively based on trade and small-scale migration. However, from the early 1520s to the early 1580s, the dynamics of 'normal' relations were significantly altered as unprecedented political contacts between Ireland and France were cultivated. These ties were abandoned when, after decades of unsuccessful approaches to the French crown for military and financial support for their opposition to the Tudor regime in Ireland, Irish dissidents redirected their pleas to the court of Philip II of Spain. Trade and migration, which had continued at a modest level throughout the sixteenth century, re-emerged in the early 1600s as the most important and enduring channels of contact between the France and Ireland, though the scale of both had increased dramatically since the early sixteenth century. In particular, the unprecedented influx of several thousand Irish migrants into France in the later stages and in the aftermath of the Nine Years' War in Ireland (1594-1603) represented a watershed in Franco-Irish relations in the early modern period. By 1610 Ireland and Irish people were known to a significantly larger section of French society than had been the case a hundred years before. The intensification of this contact notwithstanding, the intricacies of Irish domestic political, religious and ideological conflicts continued to elude the vast majority of educated Frenchmen, including those at the highest rank in government and diplomatic circles. In their minds, Ireland remained an exotic country. They viewed the Irish in the streets of their cities and towns as offensive, slothful, dirty, prolific and uncouth, just as they were depicted in the French scholarly tracts read by the French elite. This study explores the various dimensions to this important chapter in the evolution of Franco-Irish relations in the early modern period. BR> MARY ANN LYONS is Professor of History at Maynooth University, Republic of Ireland.

Faith, Fraternity and Fighting: The Orange Order and Irish Migrants in Northern England, c. 1850-1920

Faith, Fraternity and Fighting: The Orange Order and Irish Migrants in Northern England, c. 1850-1920

Ready to Go? EU Enlargement and Migration Potential: Lessons for the Czech Republic in the Context of Irish Migration Experience

EU enlargement is hardly to be seen as the major push factor for migration. There are mainly economic factors that influence the migration decisions. Besides it seems that there is a migration potential, unique for every country, that pre-determines the migration or labour mobility. In our paper we (i) analyze the impact of internal economic factors, such as GDP growth, unemployment and wages on the emigration rate and (ii) compare the migration potential for the country distinguished by the high ratio of outward migrations (represented by Ireland) with those of the post-communist economy as well as the ""new"" EU member (represented by the Czech Republic). We come to conclusions that economic factors have the decisive role on pre-determining the migrations and that migration potential and the propensity to migrate as a reaction to worsening of the economic conditions at home are highly correlated. These can explain why there was no mass emigration from the EU ""new"" Member States to the ""old"" Member States after the recent enlargement, as far as it comes to migration potential needed for inducing such labour moves. The potential emigrants from new EU Member States are simply not ready to go to wealthier Member States in search of better wage and employment opportunities.

The Irish in Europe, 1580–1815. Edited by Thomas O’Connor. Pp 219. Dublin: Four Courts Press. 2001. €55. - Irish migrants in Europe after Kinsale, 1602–1820. Edited by Thomas O’Connor and Mary Ann Lyons. Pp 208, maps. Dublin: Four Courts Press. 2003. €45.

The Irish in Europe, 1580–1815. Edited by Thomas O’Connor. Pp 219. Dublin: Four Courts Press. 2001. €55. - Irish migrants in Europe after Kinsale, 1602–1820. Edited by Thomas O’Connor and Mary Ann Lyons. Pp 208, maps. Dublin: Four Courts Press. 2003. €45. - Volume 34 Issue 136

‘Operating in the Ethnic Sphere’: Irish Migrant Networks and the Question of Respectability in Nineteenth-Century South Wales

This study explores the problems of entry by middle-class Irish migrants into respectable urban elite networks in British towns. Although opportunities to participate in political, cultural and charitable institutions were plentiful in nineteenth-century urban Britain, few Irish migrants achieved such distinctions. In the context of south Wales, this was because there were few opportunities for Irish migrants to acquire the necessary occupational status for entry into public life. Those Irish who worked in ‘middle class’ occupations, were more likely to do so in the retail and service sectors than in the professions, from which ranks local ‘worthies’ were more likely to be drawn. As a result, they struggled to attain status and remained on the margins of respectable Welsh middle-class life. For these Irish, the ‘ethnic sphere’ provided an alternative network within which status and recognition could be achieved.

‘Bands of Fellowship’: The Role of Personal Relationships and Social Networks Among Irish Migrants in New Zealand, 1861–1911

Utilising personal correspondence, this study explores the practical assistance and emotional benefit that newcomers derived from Irish expatriate kin and neighbourhood networks in New Zealand. These social networks frequently provided new arrivals with practical assistance relating to employment and accommodation, as well as enabling access to marital partners. Besides demonstrating the existence and operation of Irish migrant ties among correspondents, this study also explores the quality of these relationships. It is suggested that high levels of community solidarity rather than their absence, together with the ‘cultural baggage’ of migrants, may have had negative social consequences such as drunkenness and interpersonal conflict. Yet settlement abroad was not necessarily a crippling undertaking characterised by loneliness and maladjustment. Rather, the succour and support offered by informal expatriate ties helped alleviate feelings of dislocation and proved much more instructive than companionship provided by formal networks.

Irish Migration, Networks and Ethnic Identities Since 1750: An Introduction

The long-cherished myth of Irish migration as primarily a traumatic process that fractured existing social relations has now been replaced by a more nuanced understanding of Ireland's diasporic pas...

Priests, Publicans and the Irish Poor: Ethnic Enterprise and Migrant Networks in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Liverpool

Part of the outreach mission of one of the earliest Catholic parishes in Irish Liverpool, the St Patrick's Society developed into one of the largest collecting societies in Victorian Britain, offering burial benefit to tens of thousands of poor Irish migrants beyond the reach of organised labour or industrial insurance. Growth soon led to scandal and litigation, revealing a number of fault lines within the migrant community. Catholic clergy withdrew in protest as publicans and other ‘Micks on the make’ came to the fore, secular ethnic culture brokers who accentuated the ‘Irishness’ of the Society, running it as a machine which looked less to the respectability (or religion) of the members than to their assurance of an adequately funded ‘wake’. It was this ‘Irish’ image, as much as the alleged financial irregularities, which brought the Society into disrepute (and ruin), a judgement yet to be challenged by historians. The study examines this mutualist network and explains the rise and fall of an important, but until this point, unexamined feature of the communal life of the Irish neighbourhoods of Liverpool.

‘Women of the Wild Geese’: Irish Women, Exile and Identity in Spain, 1750–1775

This study focuses upon the experiences of first and second generation Irish female migrants in Spain during the mid-eighteenth century. Recent scholarship has sought to place Irish migrants in Europe within a broad context of assimilation. The experience of Irish communities in Spain appears to have been particularly positive, with the Irish as a group being awarded equal citizenship at the beginning of the seventeenth century. However, the gendered experience of Irish assimilation into Spanish society has received limited scholarly attention. This essay analyses the experiences of two groups of Irish women living in Spain: women who lived in religious communities and the female members of one of the most elite families to have migrated from Ireland. The lives of the daughters of Ignatius White reveal the ways in which Irish women worked their way into spheres of power and influence, including the Spanish court. The networks and activities of these women show a crystallisation of the ambitions of many Irish from the first and second generation to be born in Spain. The relationship between these women, their kinship groups and their networks of power and influence offers a positive and successful example of Irish female migrant experience.

Networking Respectability: Class, Gender and Ethnicity among the Irish in South Wales, 1845–1914

Irish migrants in nineteenth-century Britain are often seen as embodying the antithesis of the hegemonic values of respectability, temperance, self-help and mutuality that became entrenched among sections of the British working class from c.1850. This essay argues that Irish friendly and temperance societies in south Wales embraced these values and acted as networks for the dissemination of such ideals in Irish communities, assisted by the Catholic Church. A consideration of the activities of Irish societies reveals the complex interplay between ethnic, class and gender identities in a minority ethnic group. These identities are explored through an examination of the nature of ethnic networks and the messages they sought to convey. The study also examines the performative aspect of identity formation by considering Irish public processions, the dress of processionists and the responses to them.

Deconstructing Diasporas: Networks and Identities among the Irish in Buffalo and Toronto, 1870–1910

With a view to contributing to recent calls for the integration of comparative and transnational perspectives in Irish migration history, this essay describes various networks established within Irish communities in two North American cities from 1870 to 1910, and explores their role in personal and group identity formation in particular. Case studies from Buffalo and Toronto are used to underscore the importance of spatial, as well as historical, contingency in appreciating the geographies of not simply one, but several, interrelated Irish diasporas. Focusing on these cities also illuminates the difference that these networks made to the everyday lives and social landscapes of Catholics and Protestants of Irish background in the United States and Canada during a period of intensified industrialisation. As this study shows, networks socially interconnected economic, cultural, religious and political spheres for these migrants, while also linking their localities to social fields operating at wider geographical scales.

Transnationalism, Networks and Emigration from Post-War Ireland

Transnationalism is one of the widely-used concepts in the study of contemporary migrations. This article assesses the value of a transnational approach to the study of post-war Irish migration, when over a million people left Ireland, the vast majority travelling to Great Britain. The principal conclusion is that informal personal networks transcended the borders of the nation state and the Irish in Britain existed in a transnational social space which spanned the Irish Sea and included fellow-migrants, and family and friends living at home.

Urban History in Lancashire and Cheshire

Since the mid-1960s urban history in Lancashire and Cheshire has entered an age of enlightenment, in which new approaches to the subject have borne fruit, with deeper and more extensive research and publications of high quality. The tradition of urban history can be traced back to the nostalgic and antiquarian work of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, through the flowering of town history as a manifestation of civic pride in the late nineteenth century, to the mid twentieth century when the quality and quantity of work were both at a nadir. New themes in recent decades have included work on smaller market towns, cultural history, the evolution and experience of the resort towns, and a rich diversity of topics related to social history such as electoral politics, urban unrest, working-class housing, public health, and Irish migration. However, some areas and subjects remain under-researched — examples include post-1945 ethnic communities, twentieth-century urban topography, semiurban communities, and the demographic history of towns between 1500 and 1800. Overall, the last forty years have seen a remarkable resurgence of urban history in the region, and in the process many myths have been demolished, and the clichés have to a considerable extent been bypassed.

EUROPEANMIGRATION WHAT DO WE KNOW?

1. The Economics of Migration 2. From Boom to Bust: The Economic Integration of Immigrants in Postwar Sweden 3. Migration in an Scandanavian Welfare State: The Recent Danish Experience 4. Irish Migration: Characteristics, Causes, and Consequences 5. Migration, Migrants, and Policy in the United Kingdom 6. The Netherlands: Old Emigrants - Young Immigrant Country 7. German Migration: Development, Assimilation, and Labour Market Effects 8. Immigrant Adjustment in France and Impacts on the Natives 9. Italian Migration 10. Greek Migration: The two faces of Janus 11. Migrations in Spain: Historical Background and Current Trends 12. International Migration from and to Portugal: What Do We Know and Where Are We Going? 13. Aliyah to Israel: Immigration Under Conditions of Adversity 14. The New Immigrants (USA) 15. Canadian Immigration Experience: Any Lesson for Europe? 16. Europeans in the Antipodes: New Zealand's Mixed Immigration Experience

Challenging Utopia: Irish Migrant Narratives of Canada

This paper argues for the importance of the individual life story to migration research and outlines two recent Irish projects about migration which have employed life narrative methodology. The case is specifically illustrated in the Canadian context with interviews conducted for the Narratives of Migration & Return Project with four individuals from Northern Ireland who immigrated to Canada during the 1970s, all of whom eventually chose to return to Ireland. Their various experiences relate the complexities of migration and challenge the arguably predominant view of Canada as a utopian place so often conveyed in literature, humour and image. In contrast with written accounts, the life narrative interview is more likely to give voice to migrant ambivalence which, it is argued, has political potential to invoke change.

Hurling alone? How social capital failed to save the Irish from cardiovascular disease in the United States.

We performed a historical review of cardiovascular risk profiles of Irish immigrants to the United States, 1850-1970, in regard to lifestyle, socio-economic circumstances, and social capital. We analyzed US Census data from 1850-1970, area-based social and epidemiological data from Boston, data from Ireland's National Nutrition Surveillance Centre, and literature on Irish migration. The Irish were consistently at increased risk of cardiovascular diseases, a risk that related initially to material deprivation, across the life course of at least 2 generations. The principal difference between the Irish and other disadvantaged immigrant groups, such as the Italians, was dietary habits influenced by experiences during the Irish famine. Although there was a psychosocial component to the disadvantage and discrimination they experienced as an ethnic group, the Irish also exhibited strong community networks and support structures that might have been expected to counteract discrimination's negative effects. However, the Irish's high levels of social capital were not protective for cardiovascular disease.