MACMILLAN Rethinking the Irish Diaspora: After The Gathering (Migration, Diasporas and Citizenship)

This book provides scholarly perspectives on a range of timely concerns in Irish diaspora studies. It offers a focal point for fresh interchanges and theoretical insights on questions of identity, Irishness, historiography and the academy’s role in all of these. In doing so, it chimes with the significant public debates on Irish and Irish emigrant identities that have emerged from Ireland’s The Gathering initiative (2013) and that continue to reverberate throughout the Decade of Centenaries (2012-2023) in Ireland, North and South. In ten chapters of new research on key areas of concern in this field, the book sustains a conversation centred on three core questions: what is diaspora in the Irish context and who does it include/exclude? What is the view of Ireland and Northern Ireland from the diaspora? How can new perspectives in the academy engage with a more rigorous and probing theorisation of these concerns? This thought-provoking work will appeal to students and scholars of history, geography, literature, sociology, tourism studies and Irish studies. Review “This timely book achieves two unusual aspirations in Irish diaspora studies as it seeks to appraise various lacunae in relevant policy, academic and commercial fields. It considers perspectives from Northern Ireland on diaspora alongside those of the more commonly addressed Republic of Ireland, demonstrating in the process the rootedness in the national of all diaspora imaginaries. And, while both the main destinations of Irish emigrants - USA and Britain - are examined, more space is devoted to reviewing the dynamics of diasporic relations between Britain and Ireland, an often neglected aspect of Irish diaspora imaginations and images.” (Mary Hickman, Emeritus Professor of Irish Studies and Sociology, London Metropolitan University, UK) About the Author Dr Johanne Devlin Trew is Lecturer in the School of Applied Social and Policy Sciences, Ulster University, UK. Her research explores migration, diaspora, memory and historical narratives and she is the author of Leaving the North: Migration & Memory, Northern Ireland, 1921-2011 (2013). Dr Michael Pierse is Lecturer in Irish Literature at Queen’s University Belfast. His research mainly explores the writing and cultural production of Irish working-class life, and over recent years has expanded into new multi-disciplinary themes. He is the author of  Writing Ireland’s Working-Class: Dublin After O’Casey (2011).