Gender and Migration
Week 4: Irish Migrants in Britain: Gender, Racialization, Visibility and Invisibility
Irish emigration to Britain
Britain and Ireland have a colonial past – Ireland was the first British colony
In 1922 a limited independence was granted to 26 of the 32 counties of Ireland after a war of independence
In 1948 the Republic of Ireland assumed absolute independence.
The other 6 counties - Northern Ireland - remain part of the UK
Emigration to Britain has long been a feature of Irish life
- in 15th century small Irish communities in Bristol, Liverpool London
- 1841 census recorded over 400 000 Irish-born people living in Britain
- Great Famine: between 1840 and 1850 1 million Irish died and over 1 million emigrated
population crashed from 8 million to 6.5 million in just ten years.
- Emigration continued at high levels well into the 20th century, with net in-migration in the 1970s and 1990s
- Emigration is central to the Irish experience of being modern, affecting the nation and its people socially, politically, psychologically and culturally.
- From 1870s to 1970s single women were over 50% of emigrants.
- Emigration to Britain doubled from 1841 to 1871, when the census recorded 800 000
Irish-born people living in Britain
- Decline by end of 19th century as US became destination of choice, but from 1930s Britain favourite and by 1961 over 1 million Irish-born people living in Britain.
- Today about 850 000 but at least 3 million including second generation.
- Irish are the single most important migrant group in Britain.
‘White Negroes’: A Different Race?
19th c - Irish in Britain were racialised as ‘other’, seen as inferior savages
Constructed as ‘white negros’ – between the black slave and the white working man, ape-like
Seen as violent, drunken, dirty, overly fertile, lazy - the ‘body’ sign of the Cartesian mind-body split.
a creature manifestly between the gorilla and the negro is to be met with in some of the lowest districts in London and Liverpool . . . it belongs to a tribe of Irish savages . . . When conversing with its kind it talks a sort of gibberish. It is, moreover, a climbing animal and may sometimes be seen ascending a ladder laden with a hod of bricks. (Punch, 1862)
According to Engels in his Conditions of the Working Class in England:
Whenever a district is distinguished for especial filth and especial ruinousness, the explorer may safely count upon meeting chiefly those Celtic faces which he recognises at the first glance as different from the Saxon physiognomy native, and the singing aspirate brogue which the true Irishman never loses.
Irish nationalism provided further ‘proof’ or Irish savagery
Religious difference was also emphasised: as mostly Catholics the Irish could be linked with tropes of disloyalty and treason, yoked to the Pope rather than negotiating directly with God.
Dominant representation of the Irish migrant was male, but Irish women were also stereotyped:
Let a stranger to Liverpool be taken through the streets . . . and he will witness such a scene of filth and vice, as we defy any person to parallel in any part of the world. The numberless whiskey shops crowded with drunken half clad women, some with infants in their arms, from early dawn till midnight - thousands of children in rags, with their features scarcely to be distinguished in consequence of the cakes of dirt upon them, the stench of filth in every direction, - men and women fighting, the most horrible execrations of obscenity, with oaths and curses that make the heart shudder; all these things would lead the spectator to suppose he was in a land of savages where God was unknown and man was uncared for. And who are these wretches? Not English but Irish papists. It is remarkable and no less remarkable than true, that the lower order of Irish papists are the filthiest beings in the habitable globe, they abound in dirt and vermin and have no care for anything but self gratification that would degrade the brute creation… look at our police reports, three fourths of the crime perpetrated in this large town is by Irish papists. They are the very dregs of society, steeped to the very lips in all manner of vice, from murder to pocket picking and yet the citizens of Liverpool are taxed to maintain the band of ruffians and their families in time of national distress . . . (Liverpool Herald, 1855)
Irish migrants to Britain in 19thc were perceived as a racialised other.
But by 1950s and 1960s they were seen as ‘white’, though still othered. What happened?
Of the Nation but Other?
When colonized, the Irish moved freely between Britain and Ireland
Irish nationalists removed oath of allegiance to the British Crown in 1933
Claimed Irish citizenship rather that British subjecthood in 1935
Declared themselves neutral in 2ndWW
Full independence as a Republic in 1948
Irish not seen as aliens but Irish citizen with full rights of subjecthood - right of entry, to work, stand for office, pay tax, do national service etc.
Why? Post-war reconstruction needed Irish workers, given a privileged status as ‘white’ compared with the non-white immigrants who were also recruited.
References not to ape-like beasts but ‘ties of kinship, blood and history – and the intermingling of the people’, as well as ‘the historical, racial and geographic links that bond the two countries together’.
About 60 000 Irish arrived each year compared with about 3 000 from the NewCommonwealth
‘Despite their large numbers it was decided that Irish citizens did not give rise to ‘the same kind of problems or forebodings as the presence . . . of similar numbers of coloured people’ (British Government report).
The Irish were still regarded as distinct – and inferior - but no longer of a different ‘race’.
Sought as a pool of labour they were nonetheless poorly paid and ghettoized into particular occupations
‘The troubles’ contributed to this ‘othering’ and saw the introduction of legislation that effectively rendered all the Irish a suspect minority (collective criminalisation).
Commission for Racial Equality report in 1997 found:
- anti-Irish racism endemic and ingrained in Police and criminal justice system
- Irish people experienced generally negative attitudes towards them
- negative representations of Irish people were common in the media
- general acceptance of anti-Irish racism by British and Irish as ‘natural’ or justified
- some Irish people concealed their identity as Irish altogether
- recommended Irish people in Britain be considered an ethnic minority
- some Irish interviewees preferred to be regarded as part of the ‘white majority’
Gendering Irish Migration to Britain
At peak of settlement there were 30 000 more Irish women than men but popular representations and academic scholarship have focused on male emigration and simply assumed women to have similar experiences.
New literature shows that:
- Irish women occupy a distinct socio-economic position
- they are involved in a wider range of work than Irish men at a ‘higher’ grade
- but underpaid
- over represented in poor housing
- experience disproportionate share of mental heath problems
- recent arrivals more likely to access managerial positions than earlier
The stereotype of ‘Paddy’ predominates but there are stereotypes of Irish women: the nurse, the nun, the Catholic mum.
Assimilation believed to be quicker for Irish migrants especially women because they worked in more ‘mixed’ areas of the economy than men.
But oral history research shows Irish women do not consider themselves to have assimilated
Invisible in relation to ‘Paddy’, women migrants are more visible than male at work – they’re hypervisible as well as invisible.
When a bombing or anything like that happens I say “Thank god for supermarkets”, because you don’t have to speak, you don’t have to ask for a loaf of bread. I do feel intimidated. I wouldn’t want to get into a difficult situation, because I wouldn’t know how I’d react. When I buy The Irish Post I fold it over when I am in the shop – and I like to buy it in an Indian shop.
[It was] the time of the Harrods bombing. I was coming back from Kensington… obviously the buses were stopped when we got to Knightsbridge and nobody knew what was going on and this [Police] Inspector got on our bus: “Fucking Irish, they’re at it again”. And like that [flicks her finger] the bus went up and everybody started saying they’d like to string up the Irish and what they wouldn’t do to them if they could get them. And I was sick. I was shaking like a leaf, I didn’t know what to do. And the bus turned back up and I got as far as Kensington Gore and I hopped off and I sank down onto these steps of a house, I couldn’t walk my legs were shaking so much. And this woman sat down beside me and she said “are you Irish?” And I looked at her. She said, ‘it’s alright, I am too”. She said, “what are we going to do?” and I said “I don’t know” (Sister Josephine).
Where skin colour cannot be constructed as a marker of ‘otherness’, and English is a common language, accent becomes a central marker of difference.
I came to England as a teacher. And, yes, I was shy in front of English students. To be in front of a class of English children was different – [I wondered] am I up to this? How do they see me? I suppose I was getting in touch with some feeling of inferiority and needing to excel, needing to do it right. To be a good teacher. It just seemed to be a kind of… this nebulous feeling that as a race, you know, there’s something inferior about us.
Great pressure on Irish women to bring up children as Irish
Many Irish women accept responsibility for this as well as having it thrust upon them
But others face censure and charges of betrayal
Traditional Irish community revolves around Catholic church and the pub – both restrict women
Women escaping gender persecution unlikely to be welcome in traditional Irish community
The ideal or myth of return is gendered - in the 1970s women were less likely to return than men