Ireland and migration in the twenty-first century

Mary Gilmartin

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9780719097751
• eBook ISBN: 9781784996574
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Social Policy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Migration is one of the key issues in Ireland today. This book provides a new and original approach to understanding contemporary Irish migration and immigration, showing that they are processes that need to be understood together rather than separately. It uses a wide range of data – from statistical reports to in-depth qualitative studies – to show these connections. The book focuses on four key themes – work, social connections, culture and belonging – that are common to the experiences of immigrants, emigrants and internal migrants. It includes a wide selection of case studies, such as the global GAA, the campaign for emigrant voting, and the effects of migration on families. Clearly written and accessible, this book is an invaluable resource for students and scholars of Irish migration. It also has broader relevance, as it suggests a new approach to the study of migration nationally and internationally.

1

Introduction

Ireland is a place profoundly shaped by migration. In A Book of Migrations, her wonderful travel account, Rebecca Solnit uses Ireland as a site to reflect on the meaning of identity and place. She describes Ireland as ‘a good place to think about it all’ because of its long history of migration, where ‘tides of invasion, colonization, emigration, exile, nomadism and tourism’ have all shaped the country (Solnit 1998: 6–7). Solnit moves around Ireland, expecting to find a ‘homogenous, predictable, familiar world’, but instead reaching a state of inconclusiveness (Solnit 1998: 167–8). Her encounters with Irish Travellers, a group she saw as organised ‘by contemporary networks rather than historical taproots’, proved most unsettling to her expectations (Solnit 1998: 158). Her book serves a similar purpose. It unsettles our sense of identity as being fixed in and to place, and shows how migration – of people, things and ideas – transforms places and identities in an ongoing way.

Solnit’s account of the complex and changing relationship between migration, place and identity is at odds with other, more official attempts to fix meaning. For example, The Gathering was an Irish government initiative held during 2013. It brought together festivals, concerts, seminars, family reunions and a range of other events under one convenient label, and used it as part of a marketing campaign to encourage members of the Irish diaspora to visit Ireland. The Gathering was advocated as a celebration of global Irishness. Despite its claims to inclusiveness, though, The Gathering displayed a particular and limited understanding of Irishness. The activities it highlighted mostly represented a traditional understanding of Irish culture, its website had a strong emphasis on history and genealogy, and its advertising campaigns predominantly featured white people. It tapped into a romanticised view of Ireland: beautiful natural landscapes, ancestral home of far-flung families, traditional music and dance, and ‘the uniquely Irish sense of fun’ (The Gathering 2013). In painting this picture, however, it conveniently evaded the reality of life in contemporary Ireland. In the most recent Census, which took place in 2011, over 700,000 people – 15.5 per cent of the population – did not describe themselves as ‘White Irish’ (CSO 2012a). Around 12 per cent of Irish residents in 2011 had a nationality other than Irish (Gilmartin 2012), and many worked in the tourism and retail sectors, areas that were central to the success of The Gathering. Contemporary Ireland is multiethnic and multiracial, shaped by recent immigration as well as by emigration, and connected to the wider world in a variety of ways. Yet, The Gathering relied on a more limited representation, crafted around concepts of ethnic belonging that stretch in a very particular way across time and space.

The absences that were central to The Gathering have intrigued me ever since the idea was first unveiled. If The Gathering was about encouraging people to visit Ireland, then it seemed appropriate to target friends and family members of people already living in the country. Yet, the thousands of events listed as part of The Gathering made scant reference to many of Ireland’s current residents. Instead, the website featured events such as family and school reunions, and activities based around genealogy and ‘roots’. While these provided reasons for people to make trips to Ireland, their effect was not just related to enhancing a sense of belonging and community. They also served to legitimate a form of exclusion, since they relied on longevity of connection and historic ties to place. Many of the events that made use of The Gathering label thus had limited space for participants who may not identify as ethnic Irish, or whose time in Ireland may not be very extensive. This way of thinking prioritises identity over place: who you think you are is more important than where you are. I wondered why, at a time when Ireland has its highest ever number of residents with nationalities and ethnic identities other than Irish, this particular type of community-building event emerged. Rather than trying to create a sense of community based on shared residence, it seemed to be constructing a timeless, historic, ethnically exclusive version of community. In this, The Gathering is part of a broader popular discourse of Irishness, expressed clearly in the 2004 Citizenship Referendum, which unambiguously changed the basis of Irish citizenship.¹ The implications of this way of thinking about Irishness are troubling for people who have made Ireland their home.

The questions raised by The Gathering underpin this book, which explores the relationship between Ireland and migration in the twenty-first century. Too often, migration is discussed in unidirectional terms. The focus tends to be either on the places people move to (often developed, wealthy countries or cities) or on the places people leave (often poorer or conflict-ridden regions or countries). As a result, the relationship between migration to and from a particular place is rarely considered. This book considers migration in a different way. Its emphasis is on Ireland and on the twenty-first century, but it has significance for thinking about the broader relationship between migration, place and identity. This relationship, I argue, is fundamental to contemporary societies. At a time of economic chaos and crisis, developing a better understanding of this relationship takes on a new urgency.

Why migration?

Nina Glick Schiller and Noel Salazar assert that mobility ‘is the norm of our species’ (Glick Schiller and Salazar 2013: 185), while Stephen Castles and Mark J. Miller describe the contemporary era as ‘the age of migration’ (Castles and Miller 2009). Their positions are compelling. Stories of origin and meaning around the world often have mobility as a central experience: the search for a promised land inspires adventure, though often it involves sacrifice. Meanwhile, changes in transport, technology and communications mean that people appear to be migrating farther, faster and in greater numbers than ever before. Yet, the United Nations (UN) estimates that just 3.1 per cent of the world’s population are international migrants (IOM 2013). While the number of people involved – around 214 million – is large, in percentage terms this is relatively low. These two positions seem incompatible. How is it possible to make these assertions about norms and ages, when numbers suggest otherwise? How might we reconcile claims about the significance of migration with raw figures that suggest that the overwhelming majority of the world’s population are not migrants? The answers to these questions lie in the ways in which ‘migration’ and ‘migrant’ are defined and understood.

The UN relies on national statistics to count the number and percentage of international migrants. This measure is often called ‘migrant stock’: it refers to the number of migrants living in a country at a particular point in time. The classification of migrant varies: while many countries follow the UN definition of an international migrant as someone living in another country for at least a year, this is not always consistently applied. The point in time is usually when a Census is taken, so inevitably the number is out of date as soon as it is recorded. This is not the only issue with how the number of international migrants is calculated. Different countries record migrants using different criteria. Some countries focus on place of birth, and count foreign-born people as migrants. Others focus on citizenship, and record people with foreign citizenship as migrants. Both these ways of categorising migrant stock result in important omissions. Defining migrant status on the basis of place of birth fails to capture the migratory movements of people born within the borders of the state. For example, it does not include circular migrants, who migrate for shorter periods and then return periodically to their country of birth (Castles and Miller 2009: 67–70). Neither does it include return migrants, who have moved to their country of birth following an extended period living elsewhere. Defining migrant status on the basis of citizenship may also exclude return migrants, as well as people who have migrated but have taken on the citizenship of their new home. These numbers can be significant: over two million people became naturalised US citizens between 2009 and 2011 alone (Lee 2012). Using these two different criteria in one country could lead to significantly different counts of international migrants. As a result, measures of migrant stock are not always directly comparable. They also are unlikely to include irregular migrants (Jandl 2012), and as a result are inevitably underestimated.

Measures of migrant stock focus on international migration: on people who cross national borders. Sometimes this occurs not because people move, but because borders change. A recent example is the break-up of the Soviet Union, where people who would previously have been considered internal migrants were transformed into international migrants (Arel 2002). However, this also highlights the issues with discussing migration with reference to international migration only. In the case of the Soviet Union, migration from Yekaterinburg (in Russia) to Vilnius (in Lithuania) would have been considered internal migration. Following the break-up, the same movement would have been considered international migration. Yet it involves the same distance travelled, as well as separation from family and friends and the difficulties of crafting a new life in a new place. Similarly, a focus on international rather than internal migration suggests that internal migration is relatively unproblematic, and that moving within the borders of a state is a comparable experience, regardless of the state where it occurs. The example of internal migration in China suggests otherwise. There, two classes of internal migrants exist: hukou migrants, and non-hukou migrants. Each person in China has a hukou, or residence, in a specific area – either urban or rural. Hukou migrants are generally urban and privileged migrants, and are permitted to change where they live. In contrast, non-hukou migrants are generally recorded as resident in rural areas, even though they work in urban areas, often in low-skilled and low-paying jobs. As a consequence, they are not considered urban residents, and do not have access to urban welfare benefits (Chan 2010). While the annual flow of hukou migrants is believed to be between 17 and 21 million, the number of non-hukou migrants has increased dramatically, and was estimated at 150 million at the end of 2009 (Chan 2013). The Chinese example clearly shows that the large-scale movements of people that occur within state or national boundaries are significant. Our understanding of migration as a process, as well as its effects, is incomplete if these internal movements are not also considered.

While migrant stock records migrants – variously defined – at a particular point in time, this figure does not capture the dynamism of processes of migration. Measures of ‘migrant flow’ attempt to address this, but are even more inconsistent than statistics on migrant stock (de Beer et al. 2010). Some states record all people moving into their territory, while others record selectively. Some states use population registers; others use passenger surveys. Despite these inconsistencies, figures on immigration are often more comprehensive than those on emigration. In general, there is limited coherence in how states collect emigration statistics, which tend to be gathered in an even more sporadic way. As a result, we rarely have an up-to-date picture of who is moving where, and why, and of how these movements of people are changing. The consequence is that when we attempt to count migrants and quantify migration, as in the case of the UN’s 3.1 per cent figure, we undercount the number of people who have direct experience of being migrants, whether in the past or in the present. If we understand migration as living in a different place to where you were born, then it is clear that an emphasis on international migrant stock will never capture the extent and the complexity of that experience.

Raw numbers fail to fully capture the importance and significance of migration in the contemporary world because of these limits to how we count. They also fail because they cannot fully demonstrate the meaning of migration, both for those who are not migrants as well as for those who move. Migration and migrants change the places they move to. For example, the material landscapes of cities, towns and rural areas are transformed as a result of migration. New businesses emerge to serve the needs of new arrivals. These may include food stores, cafes, hairdressers, bars and money transfer facilities, and they provide employment as well as necessary services. Established businesses spot new opportunities, and respond by extending their stock or services, or advertising in different languages. There are changes, too, in social and cultural activities. New churches develop, and existing churches alter in order to accommodate new members. Different festivals are celebrated; different cultural events develop. However, writers and commentators have observed how the growing presence of migrants in particular societies may lead to uncertainty, tension and often conflict. Arjun Appadurai describes this as a ‘fear of small numbers’ (Appadurai 2006): he speculates that the fear is linked to the relationship between ‘majority’ and ‘minority’ in the era of high globalisation. As he comments, ‘majorities can always be mobilized to think that they are in danger of becoming minor … and to fear that minorities, conversely, can easily become major’ (Appadurai 2006: 83). Geographer Allan Pred suggests that migrants and minorities become symbols of other uncertainties and changes. They serve as scapegoats, he says, ‘for all that is newly unfamiliar, for every thing and every relation that is newly different, newly ununderstood, or newly unappreciated’ (Pred 2000: 31). States frame their attempts to deal with difference in a variety of ways: from creating structures that aim to protect minority rights to insisting on assimilation. These attempts are often concurrent and contradictory, and they co-exist with civil society initiatives that are similarly diverse in scope and intention. However, the broader argument holds: that a rapid change in the form of migration to a particular place may lead to social insecurities. The newly different, particularly when that difference is easily visible or audible, draw all kinds of attention from those who remain in place.

Places and social relationships also change because people leave. The identification of the ‘global care chain’ illustrates just how profound these changes can be. Hochschild describes the global care chain as the ‘series of personal links between people across the globe based on the paid or unpaid work of caring’ (Hochschild 2000: 131). As Yeates highlights (Yeates 2004a), this may include health care as well as domestic work, across a range of scales. What matters, though, is the way in which the work of caring is stretched across time and space. For example, grandparents or other family members or friends care for children at home, while the children’s parents work elsewhere, often separated for years at a time. Geraldine Pratt writes about this in the context of Filipina migrants in Vancouver, who use a particular Canadian migration scheme – the Live-In Caregiver Program – to establish their own and later their family’s rights to residency in Canada (Pratt 2012). In order to do so, they are separated from their children as they grow up. Pratt recounts the testimonies of children left behind in the Philippines, often for years at a time. As Michelle, whose mother left when she was eleven, said: ‘I don’t have that connection with my mom anymore. It was broken, right … She’s no more to me at that time than a drawing’ (in Pratt 2012: 58). When, later, families are reunited, tensions and conflicts emerge, as children who feel abandoned and their parents – predominantly mothers – who feel unappreciated have to live together again, often in difficult circumstances. The phenomenon of the ‘left behind’ – including the elderly as well as children – has also garnered attention in the Caribbean and in Asia (Olwig 2012; Toyota et al. 2007). The left behind, though ‘often forgotten’, make up a larger group than migrants themselves (Toyota et al. 2007: 157). They are affected by migration in many, often unexpected, ways.

The emphasis in these different accounts is often on the negative impacts of migration on people and on place: on families riven by migration, or on people and places struggling to cope with often-rapid changes. But migration also changes people and places in affirming ways. The role of remittances is crucial here. Migrants support the people and places they have left in a variety of ways. They send cash, used for everyday expenses. They visit with gifts, or they invest – for example in land or property or in small businesses – in the places they left. The World Bank estimates that the value of global remittance flows in 2011 was US$501 billion (World Bank 2012). Beyond the direct impact of remittances, migration brings new activities and vibrancy to places that may have been in decline. It creates new connections between people and places that previously seemed distant and separate; and it disrupts taken-for-granted understandings of places and identities in ways that may lead to more inclusive and more tolerant communities. These new connections are alternately described as transnational or translocal, while more inclusive communities may be called multicultural or cosmopolitan, or even super-diverse. These readings offer alternative views of how migration affects people and places, suggesting that migration may have a positive and energising effect.

Migration thus has an importance and a significance way beyond the raw number...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures and tables
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Mapping migration
• 3 Work
• 4 Social connections
• 5 Culture
• 6 Belonging
• 7 Conclusion
• References
• Index