My research looks at the unique experience of Irish migration to England from the generation who left in the 1950s and 1960s. It’s been incredible to work with people now in their 70s-80s about their lives in England and relationship to Ireland.

This post-war generation of Irish people migrated from all over Ireland for a whole host of reasons. Namely, opportunities that weren’t available at home. I’ve looked at how diasporic identities are formed with this cohort and the specific historical context they lived through.

When I tell people what I do,they often ask me if Ive read ‘How the Irish Became White’ Ofc Ive read this book about how Irish migrants in the US, in the 1800s, came to benefit/participate in structural racism there. It’s an important intervention on the construction of whiteness

Truth be told though, I am curious why people think it is directly relevant to my research, which is about England, 100 years later. In the US they assimilated as Irish Americans and reproduced their wealth, power and privilege. That simply didn’t and hasn’t happened in England.

One cohort was a part of colonial expansion, the other was a product of it. The people I research are among the oldest and most disadvantaged migrant groups in England, facing many social problems directly due to their uneasy migration. The experience couldn’t be more contrasting

I’m keen not to paint the Irish of this generation as victims. They’ve had complex and interesting lives but it’s also true they don’t have structural agency. Clearly people have not understood that Irish migrants in England at this time (1950s-70s) wasn’t at all like in 1800s US

Seems odd to even have to state that. Every single person I spoke to expressed experiences of prejudice/stereotyping, particularly in jobs and housing, but also socially, which limited where they could go out. The effect was a booming Irish nightlife in pubs and dance halls, btw!

The Prevention of Terrorism Act (1974) was literally set up to racially profile Irish people. Ignative and Baldwin being quoted by Irish people to shut down any conversation around broader disaporic experiences stifles discussion to develop our understanding of anti-Irish bigotry

Some Irish Americans/Irish people rewrite history to be at the centre of an oppression that they never experienced. But We know that Irish slaves weren’t a thing-it’s been established as reactionary nonsense. It’s also true the Irish-American experience is specific to time/place

We should be able to articulate the complicated relationship of post-war era Irish ppl in England without comparing it to the experience of a totally different cohort of Irish people 100 years previous in a different country. We cant use this experience to cover all of them

It can be both true that Irish Americans became not only white and the arbitrators of racial inequality and racism, a legacy still in place today and can also be true that Irish people in England, had a vastly different experience that also changes over time and place

If everyone assumes that being an ‘Irish immigrant’ is something that disappeared with the 1800s emigrant to the US, or that ‘Irishness’ Belongs to the Republic, we do a disservice to the Irish who have faced discrimination just because they were Irish in Britain (and the North)

We are well past the days of ‘No blacks No dogs No Irish’ but if we fail to acknowledge that discrimination of Irish people has existed in Britain (as well as at home) by British institutions, then we cannot begin to understand how race, empire and class are played out in today.

In England today relations have much improved and the contradictions are less stark. But isolation and poverty is still prevalent in the older Irish diaspora here. Mistrust of institutions too. Being Irish in England for them is still a politicised act and the legacy still there.