Chapter 3: Legislation, Myth and Progressive Self-constitution

This chapter places the 2004 Irish Citizenship Referendum and its outcomes within the context of the Irish nation state, as it has evolved into its contemporary condition. In it, I make theoretical considerations drawing from the discrepancy between the outcomes of the 2004 ICR and the foundational ideology of the purported democratic republic of Ireland.

The racialization of state and institutional policy is further evidenced. Following this, considerations of self-understanding are made comprehensible not only as a benign feature of modernity but also as a characteristic that is susceptible to manipulation from unequal power relations within society. An example of such that I provide is in relation to the public and media discourse leading up to the 2004 ICR. The Irish Citizenship Referendum in 2004 and its outcomes are theorized as an illogical political shift in constricting the definition of what it is to be ‘Irish’, which contradictorily is juxtaposed with the embracing of supranational European Union governance by the Irish state (Constitution of Ireland [1937] 2004).