Conference on Irish emigration ‘very timely’

EMIGRATION, which is now facing many Irish workers, was top of the agenda yesterday at a conference at the University of Limerick (UL).

The UL conference titled Neither Here Nor There: Writing the Irish Diaspora, brought together some of the best-known names in the field of Irish diaspora studies, with speakers from Canada, the US, South America, Britain and Ireland.

Conference delegate Piaras Mac Einrí said: “This is a very timely gathering. With the rise of the Celtic Tiger in the late 1990s, an entire generation of younger Irish people grew up without the expectation of leaving Ireland. The annual pictures of tearful departures from ports and airports seemed a distant memory.”

UL lecturer Tina O’Toole said the conference was timely in the context of recent immigration to Ireland. She said: “After the most turbulent 20 years of change in Ireland since independence, we can say that we have experienced migration and diaspora in all of their many forms — people leaving, people coming here and leaving again, people looking back to their homelands, people embracing their new countries, people torn and ‘in between’ the two places.

“Nowadays, the Irish in London and the Bronx have their counterparts among the Poles and west Africans in Clondalkin and Cork. Although many in Ireland are in denial about this, all face similar challenges — adapting to new societies, what to do about the legacy of their own cultures, what kind of ‘space’ they want to have between the old and the new, coping with prejudice and racism,” she said.

Keynote speakers included: Professor Eithne Luibhéid (University of Arizona); Dr Breda Gray (UL); Prof Patricia Coughlan (UCC); Prof Marjorie Howes (Boston College); Prof Laura Izarra (University of Sao Paolo); and Prof Bronwen Walter, author of the book Outsiders Inside, on the Irish in Britain.

Conference organiser Kathryn Laing said: “This conference provides us with an opportunity to view these issues through the lens of the personal and the cultural. Thus, it provides insights into lives, emotions and experiences of migrants — insights which cannot be gained from statistics, demographic forecasts or political speeches.”