Bono has reminded me of another reason that I get frustrated when people from the south of Ireland say 'the UK.' In Irish diaspora studies you find lots of Irish academics writing about Irish migration to the UK. They almost always mean 26c migration to England. Does that matter?

An unsurprising resounding AYE from me. Why? Lets start easy. So, if your work is looking at the Irish diaspora in London in say the 1860s or 1870s that was pre-partition, the Irish were one and the same nuisance to the English and where in Ireland you came from didn't matter.

If your work is looking at the Irish diaspora in London in say the 1960s or 1970s, Ireland was partitioned but the Irish were one and the same nuisance to the English and where in Ireland you came from didn't matter. In fact, anti Irish prejudice didn't just come from the English

Bare with me. It sometimes came from other Irish ppl towards those from the 6 counties. Mortified, angry or confused about the Troubles, ashamed about how the Brits tarred all Irish people with the same brush, people from the south treated lads from the North as the ones to blame

This might not have been prolific but it was prevalent enough and the legacy is still felt today. We're told by other Irish people we're not really Irish, we're from the North. Academics from the 26 often dont include Irish people from the North in their methodologies. It's wild.

If your work is about ‘Irish migration to the UK’ you have methodologically erased the the experience of Irish people who have also migrated to England and probably experienced a lot more discrimination, because they also got it from other Irish people. Classic divide and rule.

So basically Im fed up of reading ahistorical / apolitical accounts of the Irish diaspora in the 'UK' [sic England], especially ones that fetishise the discrimination of Irish people in England but also deciding that Irish people are only those born in the 26 counties. No thanks.