Europe is, we are told, experiencing a âmigration crisisâ (36) the likes of which it has never seen before and which is testing the resolve of its union. In a December 2015 issue of The Guardian, one report argues that almost 40% of Europeans cite immigration as the issue of most concern facing the EU (in Bauman, 10). Sociologists and cultural theorists tell us we need cosmopolitan awareness (Bauman, 66), a rejuvenated sense of responsibility, and a fusion of horizons to rescue ourselves from this era of individualization, where there are âover 200 million persons currently (globally) displacedâ (89). At the same time, reports of global mobility in the business world tell us expatriatism is a ârising trendâ, with more businesses âdecentralizing global mobility operations and adopting more regional approachesâ.1 The other side of this business transformation sees the conditions of large sections of our young urban populationsââsuperfluous young people condemned to the anteroom of the modern worldââbeing compared to those at a migrant camp.2 Rosi Braidotti describes this trend in terms of what she calls nomadic subjectivity and she argues that the global city and the refugee camp, in philosophical terms, are âtwo sides of the same coinâ; as Vandana Shiva writes, âone group is mobile on a world scale, with no country, no home, but the whole world as its property, the other has lost even the mobility within rootedness, lives in refugee camps, resettlement colonies and reservesâ (Shiva 1993: 98). It cannot be presumed that the promotion of the former is not implicated in the exacerbation of the latter. And yet despite the desperate waves of migration, the systematic exclusion, and the business-speak, we still hold to the idea of free movement as a sign of a tolerant, multicultural, globalised world. However, as Braidotti also tells us, there is a ânoticeable gap between how we live-in emancipated or postfeminist, multiethnic globalized societies [âŠ] â and how we represent to ourselves this lived existence in theoretical termsâ (4). Pankaj Mishra observes a similar lag or lack of fit between âthe actually available degree of freedomâ people experience and the âelaborate theories and promises of individual freedom and empowermentâ we sell ourselves (332). This book sees something similar happening around the âofficialâ Irish discourse on migration. Whether this discourse is built around diaspora or recent media initiatives with such names as Better Off Abroad,3 it seems to foster a similar kind of âgapâ between how Irish migrants live and how the migration experience is represented back to them and to fellow Irish people living in Ireland and elsewhere. The Irish migration discourse of emigration, exile, and expatriatism is a powerful one in migration studies and this book reevaluates it in light of such current realities that see the uncertainty of migration from Ireland, a first-world country, being sold in terms of being Better Off Abroad. Ireland knows all about migration; estimates put the number born in Ireland to have emigrated since the beginning of the eighteenth century at about 9 or 10 million, of which this author is one. Migration is part of the fabric of Irish life, and yet because it has traditionally been understood in one direction only, it has become a figure of loss. Perhaps this is one of the reasons for the Stateâs sluggishness in meeting immigration targets; three years on from its pledge in 2015 to take 4000 Syrian refugees, it has so far accepted only 1272.4
I use the word expatriatism deliberately, both to interrogate and deconstruct the recent commercialisation of the Irish migrant life in Irish media initiatives and to acknowledge how much the migrant experiences of our canonical writersâwhat have often been romanticisedâshare with todayâs expat stories. Migration from Ireland is now more often than not described in economic terms as a lifestyle choice. However, this is only one side of the migrant experience. The Irish Stateâs monetising of the diaspora through such initiatives as âThe Gatheringâ5 and the Irish national mediaâs economisation of the emigrant life through such initiatives as Better Off Abroad are, in a sense, transforming and liquidating one of the essential narratives of Irishness. The Irish diaspora narrative, what Luke Gibbons and Mary Robinson have both suggested should inform Irish societyâs âethics of analogyâ6 in terms of immigration policy, has always been a vital cultural resource that goes to the heart of Irish identity; it calls on a rich heritage of artistic creations and a shared social consciousness that, it seemed, always had to be about much more than money alone. This book then revisits the work of some of Irelandâs most respected migrant writers in order to both recall the very real economic and âexpatâ dimensions of their experiences âat homeâ and abroad and also to remind ourselves of some of the broader conditions of the migrant life such as career opportunities, loneliness, a constant state of (un)belonging, the desire to buy property âback homeâ, and the loss of a language. This book looks to Irish writers, men and women who emigrated and came to be regarded as expats in their new countries of residence, and it examines how their work can be read as responding to, and reappraising, some of the key issues for Irish migrants and expats today. Many of these writers did not find wealth abroad; in fact, Oliver Goldsmith âdied in debtâ and Joyce complained of an âinveterate impecuniosityâ. However, they did advance their careers and gave to world literature bodies of work grounded in the realities of the migrant experience. Their stories transform our understanding of the connection between identity and place in giving us enriching experiences of migration in terms of broadened perspective, cosmopolitanism, and the acceptance of difference and the âotherâ. If we are to take any ethics of analogy from their work, it is an ethics that recognizes that the most travelled Irish stories have been those written by writers who have found âhomesâ elsewhere through a dedication to writing and have remained open to difference to such an extent that they give us new ways of imagining migration for âcitizen[s] of the worldâ. These writers are then presented in a new light and their experiences as emigrants, immigrants, and expats are reimagined so as to explore the depths to which popular notions of Irishness are grounded on this collective experience of migration and leave-taking.
Expat or Immigrant?
An important debate has emerged recently over the lexicon of human migration. Mawuna Remarque Koutonin argues in a piece from 2015 in The Guardian that the word expat is a âremnantâ of colonial times and language; it is, Koutonin argues, one of the âhierarchical words, created with the purpose of putting white people above everyone elseâ. This book agrees with this view and it extends the observation to an examination of the role English, and most particularly native English, plays in this hierarchical system of naming. White immigrants who are native English speakers are also more likely to be referred to as expats than immigrants. This is a particularly problematic situation for Irish migrants who are reminded by State documents, presidential speeches, and national newspapers that English is not their ânational language,â7 ânative language,â or âour tongueâ and that the âIrish languageâ as â[o]ur languageâ is the âfoundation on which all of our historical, cultural and traditional output has been based. Itâs our languageâ.8 This is even though Irish writers foundational for Irish identity have often regarded English as âour languageâ. Irish expats have been happy to avail of the privileges that come with being the white, native English speaker abroadânot least of which is the fact of being labelled expat instead of immigrant or economic migrantâeven as they accept patriotically the tenor of the presidential speeches and Irish cultural criticism that describes Irish as their âtongueâ. The book will explore the repercussions of this problematic relationship between the English language and notions of Irishness in the context of migration. This book focuses on writers who typically regarded their migrations as periods of non-permanent residence abroad for economic reasons in professions their societies often aligned with cultural capital. For this reason, their migratory personas have most often been described as emigrants and expats. One might even go so far as to say that it was modernist writers in particular, writers such as Hemingway, Stein, and Joyce, who helped popularise the notion of the expat.
However, this book also argues that in the age of the econocracy,9 of neoliberalism, and of the social network, the meaning of the word expat has shifted somewhat. The expat identity has become popularised in the Irish media and in State-backed economic networking campaigns as a gateway to adventure abroad for both young professionals and non-professionals who cannot find work at home or who seek greater career opportunities abroad. The recent referendum on Repealing the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution also presented todayâs Irish standing army of migrants as jet-setting expats eager to return home at will to help shape the Constitution for those living in Ireland full-time. This is despite the fact that Ireland is the only EU region along with Malta to deny its emigrants voting rights of any kind. In other words, much of the reality of the migrant experienceâthe sense of opportunity but also the breaking up of families; the repetitive leave-taking in the era of budget airlines; the virtual âvisitsâ home through the Internet; the sense of disappointment and of being let down by oneâs countryâis airbrushed out by the consistent presentation of the migrant life as expat life of economic gain. This book, therefore, seeks to challenge such popular descriptions of migrant life as expat life by laying bare the realities of migration through the work of these writers, Irish emigrants who are overlooked commentators and life-writers on the effects of migration from, and back into, Ireland.
The recent appearance in national newspapers and on national broadcasters of webpages and discussions devoted to the Irish âabroadâ also prioritises the word expat over immigrant when speaking of the Irish experience. I return to this social network expatriatism in Chap. 10. As emigration is now seen in these pieces more as a lifestyle choice than a painful migration arising out of economic necessity, the label expat is seen as more appropriate than emigrant; migration for Irish citizens is now rebranded as a means to being âbetter off abroadâ. In other words, the hierarchical order that expat connotes, one that milks fluency in global English and whiteness for all they are worth in the global marketplace, is to be assumed with confidence regardless of the provenance of this expat privilege. Irish expatriatism as privilege is interrogated in this book by laying bare the role the English language played in how the migrant or nomadic identity was experienced and expressed in key texts that have come to define Irishness and an Irish sense of (un)belonging. Implicit in many of the stories on recent websites is a desire to move abroad for a better living; this is precisely what Irish writers have always done in order to earn a living abroad from writing either because publication in Ireland was economically impossible or because they feared censorship. I return to these somewhat monumentalised and canonical emigrant writers in the following chapters and dress them up momentarily in the colours and concerns of contemporary talk on the expat. In such a context, they are no longer emigrants only but professional writers and travellers who were often uncertain about how long they would stay in a place precisely because they were uncertain about the very meaning of âhomeâ and ânationâ and were in the process of redefining these concepts for future generations. In redressing and reframing their work, I aim to bring out not only the economic necessity of their migration, often grounded as it was on a form of penury or inveterate impecuniosity that would today see them labelled as migrants if they had arrived as non-white, non-fluent English speakers. By doing so, I hope the book also problematises the current selling and rebranding of expatriatism. The work of these writers helps us break down the certainty through which we assign categories in todayâs lexicon of migration and allows for these writers to put forward the very notion of world citizenry that Oliver Goldsmith had already given us in the 1760s.
In recent years, Irish culture and society has also been coming to terms with the effects of the economic downturn or Crash. However, Ireland is placed second from top in a recent table on ...