Upcoming Deadline--Rethinking Modern Irish Identity: Immigration, Citizenship, and Solidarity
Irish identity has long been approached as anomalous. Ireland itself has been viewed as an anomalous state (Lloyd, Anomalous States). It was England’s first colony, a laboratory for empire, but at the same time contributed to the imperial project elsewhere, making it arguably semicolonial (Attridge and Howe, Semicolonial Joyce). It has been described as a first-world country with a third-world memory (Gibbons, Transformations in Irish Culture). But what defines Irishness now? After the Celtic Tiger, the 2008 banking crisis, and Brexit, how has Irish identity changed? As a result of increasing refugee crises around the world, Ireland is as much marked by immigration as emigration.