Migrations in Irish Society and Literature

This book addresses the issue of migration to and from Ireland since the 17th-18th century and examines the dynamics of emigration and immigration down to the present day. It is distinctive in its pluri-disciplinary approach of migrating issues in Ireland as well as the way it confronts individual and collective dynamics in the context of migration. It offers a comprehensive and englobing understanding of key issues of migration in Ireland today and their legal, social and linguistic impacts, while also focusing on the representations of the migrating experience in literature, be it in poetry or in fiction. In doing so it also aims at reassessing issues of home, place-making and belonging. The book goes beyond the study of immigration and emigration (from a historical or economic approach) but rather demonstrates the complexity of migrating trajectories, whether individual or collective, and how those migrating stories are inscribed within national and supra-national dynamics. The study of the words used to narrate those experiences offers insight into the plurality of migrating experiences, hence the place devoted in this book to literary representations.

Marie Mianowski's research focuses on the representations of place, place-making and landscape issues in an Irish context. She is the editor of Irish Contemporary Landscapes in Literature and the Arts (Palgrave, 2012), and the author of a monograph Post Celtic Tiger Landscapes in Irish Fiction (Routledge, 2017). She has co-edited several books on migration and published many chapters and articles on the above themes. Véronique Molinari is a Professor of British and Irish history. Her research focuses on the Victorian and Edwardian women's movement in Britain and Ireland and on the various forms of women's political participation in British and Irish politics. As co-founder of the project "Migrations, Borders and International Relations" of her research centre ILCEA4, she has dedicated a large part of her research to the issue of female emigration from Britain and Ireland. Her publications include: "The Emigration of Irish Famine Orphan Girls to Australia: The Earl Grey Scheme" in Marie Ruiz (Ed.), International Migrations in the Victorian Era, Studies in Global Migration History, (Brill, 2018) and " A Most 'Valuable Class': The Shetland Female Emigration Society and the Emigration of Single Women to South Australia and Tasmania in the early 1850s" in Northern Scotland, Volume 16, Issue 1 (May 2025).

Chapter 1. Introduction (Mianowski and Molinari).- Part I: Emigration from Ireland.- Chapter 2. "The Great Wheel of our Machine" - Olive Trant: an Atypical Irish Migrant During the Jacobite Period 1650-1750 (Farrell).- Chapter 3. 'Thorns in the Sides of Hundreds of Protestant Husbands': The Emigration of Irish Female Orphans to the Australian Colonies and the Earl Grey Scheme Controversy (1848-1850) (Molinari).- Chapter 4. Going Native: Maud MacCarthy in India (Jindani).- Chapter 5. Curating 'Entangled Islands: Ireland and the Caribbean' at EPIC The Irish Emigration Museum (Healy).- Part II: Immigration to Ireland.- Chapter 6. Migrants and Migrations on the Island of Ireland Before and After Brexit: How Soft is the Irish border? (Macovei, Ní Chiosáin & Rault).- Chapter 7. Voices from the Margins: Direct Provision (Ní Gheallabháin).- Chapter 8. Migrations and Primary Schooling in the Republic of Ireland: Potential and Limitations of School Choice? (Fournier-Noel).- Part III: Writing the Migrating Experience: Writing the Journey Out.- Chapter 9. 'This Road is Not New': Early Modern Poethics of Migration in John Montague and Michael Hartnett (Lamb).- Chapter 10. On the Chances of Migrant Voices Making it Through: Records of Migration in Contemporary Irish Poetry (Trachsler).- Part IV: Power and Agency: The Turbulences of Belonging.- Chapter 11. Archipelagic migrations in Nuala O'Connor's Seaborne (2024) (McCann).- Chapter 12. Power and Powerlessness: Narratives of Young Female Asylum Seekers in Recent Irish YA Novels (Penet).- Chapter 13. "The kin' English dey speak, me I don't understand at all": Investigating the Linguistic, Stylistic and Literary Stakes of Nonstandard Language in Melatu Uche Okorie's This Hostel Life (2018) (Boichard).- Chapter 14. "'When travelling…': Migration as Translation in Yan Ge's Elsewhere" (2023) (Sinoimeri).