Mary J. Hickman

The limitations of whiteness and the boundaries of Englishness Second-generation Irish identifications and positionings in multiethnic Britain

The focus of this article is the second-generation Irish in England. It is based on data collected as part of the Irish 2 project, which examined processes of identity formation amongst the second-generation Irish population in England and Scotland. The article examines and maps identifications and positionings of second-generation Irish people and discusses how two hegemonic domains - Ireland and England - intersect in the lives of the children of Irish-born parents, with material and psychological consequences. Their positionings in multiethnic Britain are compared with those of ‘visible’ minority ethnic groups, and their narratives of belonging and non-belonging are analysed in terms of the limitations of whiteness and the boundaries of Englishness.

Deconstructing whiteness: Irish women in Britain

The Irish are largely invisible as an ethnic group in Britain but continue to be racialized as inferior and alien Others. Invisibility has been reinforced by academic treatment. Most historians have assumed that a framework of assimilation is appropriate and this outcome is uncritically accepted as desirable. Sociologists on the other hand have excluded the Irish from consideration, providing tacit support for the ‘myth of homogeneity’ of white people in Britain against the supposedly new phenomenon of threatening (Black) ‘immigrants’.Focus on the paradigm of ‘colour’ has limited the range of racist ideologies examined and led to denial of anti-Irish racism. But an analysis of nineteenth-century attitudes shows that the ‘Irish Catholic’ was a significant Other in the construction of the British nationalist myth. Despite contemporary forgetting, hostility towards the Irish continues, over and above immediate reactions to recent IRA campaigns. Verbal abuse and racial harassment are documented in London and elsewhere, but unacknowledged.The masculine imagery of ‘Paddy’ hides the existence of Irish women in Britain, although they have outnumbered men since the 1920s. In America, by contrast, there is a strong stereotype of ‘Bridget’ and her central contribution to Irish upward mobility is recognized. But invisibility does not protect Irish women in Britain from racism. Indeed, they are often more exposed since their productive and reproductive roles connect more firmly to British society. Moreover, women have played a key role in maintaining Catholic adherence, which continues to resonate closely with Irishness and difference.

Migration and social cohesion in the UK

This book argues that social cohesion is achieved through people (new arrivals as well as the long-term settled) being able to resolve the conflicts and tensions within their day-to-day lives in ways that they find positive and viable. These everyday tensions and difficulties are not the result of segregated communities or introduced by problematic new arrivals but rather arise from the conditions of postindustrialism, individualism and neoliberalism. These social and economic forces shape the contours of peoples everyday lives, varying according to where they live and the histories of those places. Most important are the histories and narratives of earlier migrations in each place. This book challenges the prevailing view that social cohesion is about the assimilation of new immigrants through acceptance of shared values of Britishness. Rather social cohesion is achieved through peoples broad acceptance of a diverse Britain and by navigating the fine lines between separateness and commonalities/differences and unity in the places where they live.

Migration, postindustrialism and the globalized nation state : social capital and social cohesion re-examined

Abstract In Britain issues of migration are framed by the governments commitment to achieving community cohesion through embracing diversity. The social capital said to bind social cohesion is the shared values of tolerance, human rights and equality. Migrants, as outsiders, have to acquire this social capital to participate in the cultural economy of modern Britain. Failure of both new and settled migrant communities to achieve cohesiveness is seen to threaten modern Britishness. Against this prescription we argue that ‘social cohesion’ has been radically challenged by the transformations of postindustrialism, the new dynamics of migration and its securitization, and the changing politics of national belonging. Where community cohesion is understood only in terms of the threats posed to it by migration, the explanatory terrain for understanding the instabilities of contemporary social life are reduced. Blaming migration fuels racialization. It denies the strategic importance of both migration and multiculturalism, diminishes commitment to diversity, and undermines social inclusiveness and form of collective belonging.

DE/CONSTRUCTING “SUSPECT” COMMUNITIES

Irish and Muslim communities in Britain are, or have often been, constructed negatively in public discourse, where they have been associated with terrorism and extremism. Despite similarities in the experiences of these communities, little comparative research has been conducted. We address this gap by implementing a critical discourse analysis of national and diaspora press coverage of events involving Irish and Muslim communities that occurred in Great Britain between 1974 and 2007. We identified a consensus within the press that “law-abiding” Irish and Muslim people must stand up against “extremists” within their ranks and defend what newsmakers perceive are British values; in this way Irish and Muslim communities are constructed as both inside and outside Britishness. We conclude that the construction of these communities as “suspect” happens mostly in the ambiguity of news discourse, which contributes to fostering a socio-political climate that has permitted civil liberties to be violated by the state security apparatus.

Social cohesion and the notion of ‘suspect communities’: a study of the experiences and impacts of being ‘suspect’ for Irish communities and Muslim communities in Britain

In this article, we consider how the practice of conceiving of groups within civil society as ‘communities’ meshes with conceptualisations of certain populations as ‘suspect’ and consider some of the impacts and consequences of this for particular populations and for social cohesion. We examine how Irish and Muslim people in Britain have become aware of and have experienced themselves to be members of ‘suspect communities’ in relation to political violence and counterterrorism policies from 1974 to 2007 and investigate the impacts of these experiences on their everyday lives. The study focuses on two eras of political violence. The first coincides with the Irish Republican Armys (IRA) bombing campaigns in England between 1973 and 1996, when the perpetrators were perceived as ‘Irish terrorists’; and the second since 2001, when, in Britain and elsewhere, the main threat of political violence has been portrayed as stemming from people who are assumed to be motivated by extreme interpretations of Islam and are often labelled as ‘Islamic terrorists’. We outline why the concept of ‘suspect communities’ continues to be analytically useful for examining: the impact of ‘bounded communities’ on community cohesion policies; the development of traumatogenic environments and their ramifications; and for examining how lessons might be learnt from one era of political violence to another, especially as regards the negative impacts of practices of suspectification on Irish communities and Muslim communities. The research methods included discussion groups involving Irish and Muslim people. These demonstrated that with the removal of discourses of suspicion the common ground of Britains urban multiculture was a sufficient basis for sympathetic exchanges.

Family stories, public silence: Irish identity construction amongst the second‐generation Irish in England

Abstract Formal narratives of history, especially that of colonial oppression, have been central to the construction of national identities in Ireland. But the Irish diasporic community in Britain has been cut off from the reproduction of these narratives, most notably by their absence from the curriculum of Catholic schools, as result of the unofficial ‘denationalisation’ pact agreed by the Church in the 19th century (Hickman, 1995). The reproduction of Irish identities is largely a private matter, carried out within the home through family accounts of local connections, often reinforced by extended visits to parent/s ‘home’ areas. Recapturing a public dimension has often become a personal quest in adulthood, ‘filling in the gaps’. This paper explores constructions of narratives of nation by a key diasporic population, those with one or two Irish‐born parents. It places particular emphasis on varying regional/national contexts within which such constructions take place, drawing on focus group discussions and interviews for the ESRC‐funded Irish 2 Project in five locations — London, Glasgow, Manchester, Coventry and Banbury.

Constructing ‘suspect’ communities and Britishness: Mapping British press coverage of Irish and Muslim communities, 1974–2007

There exist many parallels between the experiences of Irish communities in Britain in the past and those of Muslim communities today. However, although they have both been the subject of negative stereotyping, intelligence profiling, wrongful arrest and prejudice, little research has been carried out comparing how these communities are represented in the media. This article addresses this gap by mapping British press coverage of events involving Irish and Muslim communities that occurred between 1974 and 2007. The analysis shows that both sets of communities have been represented as ‘suspect’ to different degrees, which the article attributes to varying perceptions within the press as to the nature of the threat Irish and Muslim communities are thought to pose to Britain. The article concludes that a central concern of the press lies with defending its own constructions of Britishness against perceived extremists, and against abuses of power and authority by the state security apparatus.

Census Ethnic Categories and Second-Generation Identities: A Study of the Irish in England and Wales

This article focuses on the second-generation Irish in Britain, and presents findings of the relationship between particular social characteristics and predictions of the likelihood of second-generation Irish selecting ‘White Irish’ or ‘White British’ in the 2001 Census in England and Wales. Using a combination of new quantitative data and earlier (unpublished) qualitative evidence, it analyses the complexity underlying the public claiming of a British or Irish identity in the Census and argues that it is not possible to predict that individuals with the closest attachments to Ireland will necessarily select the ‘White Irish’ category nor that those who select ‘White British’ inevitably have weaker ties. The ONS Longitudinal Survey data presented here reveal that age, gender, marital status, educational qualifications, upward social mobility and number of Irish-born parents are significant social characteristics increasing the likelihood of particular selections of census category. The article discusses the form of the ethnic question and its impact on response patterns, proposed revisions for the 2011 Census, and the usefulness or otherwise of census categories as a lens for examining second-generation identification.

Housing and the Family

Together, housing and the family make up the spaces of home structuring the day-to-day places and relations in which people live their lives. Housing accommodates family and personal life and spatially situates domestic familial relations. Housing and personal life are also framed by the wider dynamics of place that identify where people live and texture the social relations of how they live communally, locally and interpersonally. The common expression ‘an English man’s home is his castle’ suggests that home also contains the spaces of national belonging through identifications of ‘the family’ best suited to reproduce the national population. ‘The trope of the family is widespread in the figuring of national narratives – homeland, motherland, daughters and sons of the nation’ (Walter, 1995: 37; McClintock, 1993). The domestic space – home and hearth – that reproduces the family is constructed through welfare and gender regimes that privilege, ethnonationally, the kinds of women and families that properly reproduce the nation (Yuval Davis, 1993; Gedalof, 2007).