Archive for August, 2009
Wall Street Journal examines rising emigration
Thursday, August 27th, 2009Wall Street Journal reporter Joellen Perry examines Ireland’s upsurge in emigration in today’s edition; she takes a look at its impact on the Mayo community of Ballycroy, which has lost its Gaelic football team after four of its players left the country.
A key gauge of Ireland’s economic health isn’t found in the island nation’s business districts or trading floors, but on the football fields of the rural west, where rosters of amateur clubs are getting so thin that villages are struggling to find talented players to field 15-person teams.
Sean McManamon left Ballycroy — a picturesque village sandwiched between the Atlantic Ocean and the Nephin Beg mountain range — for a job in London in February after his small construction firm folded. Mr. McManamon, a midfielder who was a stalwart of the Ballycroy team’s defense, emigrated around the same time as three other players, leaving the village without an adult team for the first time in more than 50 years.
It is the 35-year-old father of four’s second stint as an emigrant. He hopes it is his last. Emigrating again, after being in London for eight years and returning in 1999 to capitalize on Ireland’s real-estate boom “was easily one of the hardest things I’ve ever done,” says Mr. McManamon, who left his family, a 100-acre farm and a nearly finished seven-bedroom home behind. “I never thought I’d leave Ireland again.”
Perry notes a number of other indicators: immigration centres in destination countries are reporting more arrivals, the US embassy is reporting a rise in the number of those applying for short-term working visas, and a director at Deloitte says that “10% of the 2,000 Irish executives who are potential job candidates for his corporate clients are now working overseas, up from ‘pretty much zero’ last year.”
The anecdotal evidence of increasing emigration continues to build – we’re still waiting for the official migration figures from the CSO for the year to April 2009, which presumably will confirm what these numerous reports are suggesting.
Related web page:
WSJ.com: Economic crisis strikes at Ireland’s heartland
Irish American Writers and Artists to honour William Kennedy
Wednesday, August 26th, 2009Here’s something really exciting:Â a new non-profit organisation has been formed to promote and celebrate the Irish-American contribution to the arts. Irish American Writers and Artists, Inc. is a non-profit organisation that
has established itself as a focal point for artists who would like to use their work to affect matters of culture, entertainment, politics and social justice. We stage events, sponsor readings, concerts and art exhibits, and hope to call attention to books, plays, movies, music and other works that reflect the STARTLING DIVERSITY of the Irish American experience.
The organisation will hold its first annual Eugene O’Neill Award Benefit on October 16, celebrating the lifetime achievements of author William Kennedy. Kennedy is known for his literary portrayal of Irish-American life in Albany, NY in such works as the Pulitzer-Prize-winning Ironweed. The night promises to be a special evening: Hollywood actor Matt Dillon and Pulitzer-Prize winner John Patrick Shanley (who wrote the play “Doubt”) will celebrate Kennedy’s artistry, while New York Times reporter and memoirist Dan Barry will present the award.
The group has its genesis in a panel at a literary festival in Charlottesville, Virginia in March 2008. Authors Peter Quinn and T.J. English, the late historian and author Daniel Cassidy, “Irish-America: Coming into Clover” author Maureen Dezell, and Dan Barry spoke at a panel entitled “In Search of Irish America”. [Listen to the podcast of the panel.]
In discussions afterward they realised a common interest in progressive politics and activism; this prompted them to gather a group of Irish-Americans active in the arts to support an ad praising then-candidate Barack Obama in the Irish Echo, the largest Irish-American newspaper. Eventually out of this initiative grew a spirit of collectivism that led to the formation of the association.
From their mission statement:
IAW&A is committed both to bringing together the Irish American creative community in new self-awareness and to being a force for inter-ethnic and interracial solidarity, understanding and active cooperation.
In the long tradition of Irish resistance to oppression and struggle for liberty, IAW&A supports free speech, the rights of immigrants, the equality and dignity of all—regardless of race, gender, religion or sexual orientation—and the process of peaceful, positive social change in the U.S., Ireland and around the world. While avoiding party affiliation and endorsing no candidates for public office, IAW&A is outspoken in defense of artistic freedom, human rights and social justice.
The board of directors includes some of the most important commentators on Irish America in recent times, including legendary New York journalist Pete Hamill, “Looking for Jimmy” author Peter Quinn, and “All Souls” memoirist Michael Patrick MacDonald.
Here’s to their success! No doubt this organisation will serve as a great focal point and showcase for the vitality of Irish-American culture.
Related websites:
- Irish American Writers and Artists website
- IAW&A blog
- O’Neill Award
- Charlottesville Podcasting Network – VABook 2008: In Search of Irish America
UK Irish organisations gear up to help new arrivals
Thursday, August 20th, 2009The Irish Post is reporting that UK-based Irish organisations are stepping up their efforts to assist new arrivals in the face of increasing demands for their services.
The paper reports that a number of community centres, county organisations, and GAA clubs are willing to assist newcomers to Britain. For example, John Shea from London’s Kerry Association told the paper:
“We are telling people to contact us before you come. Let us know what type of work you are looking for and what you plan to do and we can make calls on your behalf.
“It’s a frightening experience to be in London with little or no support and we’re here to help.�
Read the article on the Irish Post website:
Book on immigration to Canada republished
Thursday, August 20th, 2009A revised edition of a 1991 book detailing Famine-era migration from Ireland to Canada has just been published. “Flight from Famine: The Coming of the Irish to Canada” was written by Donald MacKay.
In an interview with the Chronicle Herald, the author says that he was inspired to write the book on a visit to Ireland, when he realised that the Famine emigration was a seldom-discussed topic.
“We were in Ireland one summer in the late 1980s and we had noticed that nobody ever talked much about the famines and the migrations. We couldn’t find much about those events and my wife said I should write a book about them.”
Journalist Lorna Inness continues:
As he noted in the epilogue to the revised edition, the general atmosphere of silence, both here and in Ireland, has changed over the past 20 years.
In 1995, then-president Mary Robinson, speaking to the Irish Parliament, broke “the great silence” and the result was “almost as if a barrier had dropped . . . on both sides of the Atlantic.”
Read the articles on the Chronicle Herald website:
Screening the Irish in Britain: Trinity College Dublin, 26 Sept 09
Thursday, August 20th, 2009The provisional schedule for “Screening the Irish in Britain”, a film conference being hosted at Trinity College Dublin on 26 September, has been announced.
The conference is being held in the Samuel Beckett seminar room at the Samuel Beckett Centre.
This project is supported by the Trinity College Dublin Long Room Hub Research Initiative Funding Scheme, and there is no attendance fee.
If you would like to be kept up to date with the project, please email your name to the project director, Dr Ruth Barton (ruth.barton@tcd.ie)
Provisional Schedule
9.15: Seminar opening
9.30�10.50:
Dr Marcus Free, Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick:
On the Edge: the Irish in Britain as a Troubled and Troubling Presence in the Work of Jimmy McGovern and Alan Bleasdale
Dr Paula Gilligan, IADT:
‘Free Agents-mobile reflexive and white’; Representation of the
‘Professional’ Irish Women in Contemporary Popular English TelevisionDrama.
Dr Pat Brereton, Dublin City University
Fictional representations of the Irish in Contemporary British TV Drama: A case study of EastEnders [1997 special set in Ireland] and Father Ted et al.
10.50�11.15: Coffee break
11.15�12.15
Prof Charles Barr, University College Dublin
Ealing’s View of Ireland
Daniel Fitzpatrick
Reexamining Sister Clodagh’s ‘Irishness’ in Black Narcissus (1947)
12.15�1.15:
Dr Lance Pettitt, Leeds Metropolitan University:
Between Archive and Anecdote: Towards an Exilic History of Irish Cinema in England
1.15�2.15 – Lunch break
2.15�3.35
Prof John Hill, Royal Holloway, University of London
The Irish and Working-class ‘Authenticity’ in the films of Ken Loach
Prof Bronwen Walter, Anglia Ruskin University
Including the Irish: taken-for-granted representations of the Irish in England
Prof Martin McLoone, University of Ulster
Why Didn’t Kevin Keegan play for Ireland? Contrasting Narratives of the Irish in Britain
3.35�3.55: Coffee Break
3.55 – 5.15
Zélie Asava, University College Dublin
‘No blacks, no dogs, no Irish’: being black and Irish in Neil Jordan’s Britain
Emmie McFadden, Sheffield Hallam University,
Hyde and Seek: English-Irish Hybridity in Stephen Frears’ Mary Reilly
Padraic Killeen, Trinity College Dublin
Stained Flesh – Ireland As Idyll / Damp Patch in Mike Leigh’s Naked
5.15�6.45:
Deirdre Lynch, Dublin Institute of Technology:
‘ReConfiguring Elderly Male Irish Immigrants in London through
Ethnographic Film Practice’
Screening: I Only Came Over for a Couple of Years… (2003)
Dir: David Kelly, Prod: Tony Murray
This film will be introduced by Dr Tony Murray, London Metropolitan University
Visit related websites: