Women and the Irish Diaspora

by Gray; Breda

• ISBN13: 9780415260022
• ISBN10: 0415260027
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2003-12-10
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Women and the Irish Diasporalooks at the changing nature of national and cultural belonging both among women who have left Ireland and those who remain. It identifies new ways of thinking about Irish modernity by looking specifically at women's lives and their experiences of migration and diaspora.Based on original research with Irish women both in Ireland and in England, this book explores how questions of mobility and stasis are recast along gender, class, racial and generational lines. Through analyses of representations of 'the strong Irish mother', migrant women, 'the global Irish family' and celebrity culture, Breda Gray further unravels some of the complex relationships between femininity and Irish modernity(ies).

Author Biography

Breda Gray is Senior Lecturer, Women's Studies, in the Department of Sociology at the University of Limerick.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	vii
Introduction	1	(20)
1 'Women', the diaspora and Irish modernity(ies)	21	(19)
2 'Keeping up appearances' and the contested category 'Irish women'	40	(20)
3 'We haven't really got a set country': global mobilities and Irish Traveller women	60	(24)
4 'The bright and the beautiful take off . . . ': gendered negotiations of staying and going	84	(21)
5 'Are we here or are we there?': migrant Irish identity in 1990s London	105	(24)
6 'The Irish are not "ethnic"': 'whiteness', femininities and migration	129	(20)
7 Women, the diaspora and the 'global Irish family': feminist contentions	149	(16)
Appendices	165	(10)
Notes	175	(21)
References	196
Index