Chapter 11: Double the Diaspora: On Being Second-Generation Irish and Working Class

This chapter explores class and migration through a situated autoethnographic lens. It considers the experiences of immigrants from the North of Ireland who arrived in England during the 1950s, and were Catholic, Republican and significantly, working class. It goes on to argue the concept of diaspora as theoretically inadequate in analysing displaced populations. It claims the application of the concept of emigration brings into focus the coercive nature of migratory displacement and the social and economic conditions of scarcity and desperation that enforce it.

The second half of the chapter explores emigration not as the movement from one geographical location to another but the movement from one class to another. It highlights the complexities involved in being a working-class, second-generation Irish academic in a predominantly middle-class environment. In the process, it provides a focus on alienation from both ethnic/colonial and classed perspectives.

The chapter concludes by suggesting the experience of belonging to both a classed and ethnic diaspora is one that results in a subjectivity that is by definition oppositional.