This book was envisaged as both sequel to and expansion on themes addressed in two earlier volumes published by Manchester University Press. The aim ofRacism and Social Change in the Republic of Ireland(2002) was to draw attention to the exclusionary potential of the legacies of monocultural nation building during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It combined a historical focus on the marginalisation of Jewish, Protestant and Traveller minorities with case studies addressing the specific mechanics of exclusion in specific post-independence settings. These included examinations of the politics of spatial exclusions encountered by Travellers in County Clare, overt discrimination...

In 2004 the Republic of Ireland (hereafter Ireland) became one of just three European Union member states (along with the UK and Sweden) that agreed to allow unrestricted immigrants from the 10 new EU-accession states. Also in 2004, the Irish government introduced a referendum on citizenship. This was accompanied by a populist politics that emphasised distinctions between ‘nationals’ and ‘non-nationals’. Some 80 percent of voters supported the removal of the constitutional birthright to Irish citizenship from the Irishborn children of migrants. But political populism in support of the referendum was mostly directed against formerly asylum-seeker African migrants and their children,...

The implicit subtexts within debates about integration are often anxieties about social cohesion. Social cohesion is a term used in the social sciences to denote the bonds or ‘glue’ that hold people together in society. The focus of this chapter is upon ideological, normative and empirical claims about social cohesion that have a bearing on Irish responses to immigration. Within such debates, the terms ‘integration’ and ‘social cohesion’ are by no means clearly fixed in meaning; to some extent at least, understandings of the former depend on perspectives on the latter. This chapter emphasises the need to distinguish between normative...

The 2006 Irish Census identified a population of 4,239,848 persons. Of the ‘usually resident’ population 610,000, or 14.7 percent of the total, were born outside the Republic of Ireland. Of these, approximately 10 percent were ‘non-Irish nationals’. Just over 10 percent of children in Ireland in 2006 were born in other countries. Of a total of 117,600 of those under 19 years, 46,900 were born in England and Wales, 9,900 were born in the United States, 5,900 in Poland, 3,800 in Lithuania and 9,800 in other EU countries.¹ Some 10,000 children were born in African countries – some of these are...

So begins a 2009 United Nations research paper on how the exploitation of vulnerable migrants undermines their integration.¹ From Amartya Sen’s capabilities perspective, freedom from exploitation depends on the options a person has in deciding what kind of life to lead, as well as the presence or absence of coercion. Much the same might be said about their capacity to integrate. The basic capabilities of any immigrant (or indeed anyone else) include rights and entitlements and the knowledge and ability to benefit from these, as well as human capital. The potential benefits of human capital to an individual may be...

In a widely reported speech in April 2008, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, patron of the Catholic schools which comprise well over 90 percent of Dublin’s educational system, criticised Catholics who withdrew their children from schools with immigrant pupils: ‘I hear of parents – even those who might fit into the social categorisation of “good Catholic parents” – making decisions with their feet or with their four-wheel-drives to opt out of diversity in schools.’¹ The year 2007 had witnessed rising numbers of non-Catholic immigrant children being unable to secure school places in oversubscribed Catholic schools. The overwhelming majority of primary schools in the Republic...

The first major Irish immigration policy statement,Integration: A Two Way Process(2000) advocated the integration of refugees and immigrants into Irish society through employment promotion measures and through addressing specific barriers of discrimination, non-recognition of qualifications and lack of fluency in English.¹ The repertoire of barriers to labour market participation was well known by 2000. The same issues cropped up again and again as core issues in many subsequent research and policy reports and within case studies set out by various organisations working with vulnerable and socially excluded migrants. Back in 2000, a substantial percentage of immigrants were asylum...

This chapter examines immigrant political participation and the role of citizenship in the political integration of immigrants. Firstly, it considers bottom-up efforts of immigrants to participate in electoral politics since 2004, when two former asylum seekers were elected as councillors in the local government elections; the chapter draws on interviews with almost half of all immigrant candidates who contested the 2009 local government elections. Secondly, the chapter examines the institutional responsiveness of Irish political parties to immigrants as voters, candidates and party members; it draws on interviews and written responses from each of the political parties in 2003, 2004, 2007...

In December 2007 the unemployment live register stood at 173,200; a year later it had risen to 293,000; by December 2009 some 423,400 persons were registered as unemployed. It may seem that the depths of an economic recession is hardly the optimum time to invest in integration, but there is no better one to focus on questions of social inclusion and social cohesion that affect immigrants and Irish citizens alike. Much of the information and research on which this book was built slightly predates the economic crisis of 2009. Immigration in the Irish case was driven by economic growth and,...