Archive for July, 2010

Mapping the Irish diaspora

Tuesday, July 13th, 2010

One thing that I’d be really interested in seeing is a really good global map of the Irish diaspora. As far as I know, there isn’t one – but there are some interesting maps out there giving insight into various aspects of the diaspora that could inspire geography students to greater things!

Name mapping is an interesting way to see where the Irish have gone. The “worldnames” map at PublicProfiler.org allows users to pop in names and see the frequency of their occurrence around the world. Pop in, say, Sullivan, and you’ll see that it’s popular in Ireland, but also Australia, the US, Canada, New Zealand, the UK, Argentina, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.

The major drawback of the map is that is uses data for only 26 countries, and we know of course that Irish people are legion throughout the world (Liam Ferrie’s Irish Emigrant news service, for example, has recipients in over 150 countries).

What other maps exist showing Irish populations around the world?

Here’s one showing the distribution of the Irish population in the US of more than a century ago, using census data from 1872. (I found it on Wikipedia, where it’s noted that the data does not include the Scots-Irish.)

And the US Census Bureau produces great maps using ethnic data – this one shows the comparative distribution of various ethnic groups through mapping the largest ancestral population in each county. The Irish are the top reported ancestry in surprisingly few counties, mainly focused in New York and New England.

And here’s a detailed map of populations of Irish ancestry by US county.  For the sake of comparison, you can check out similar maps for other ethnic groups on this wonderful Wikipedia page.

For a great example of a “micro-map” of the Irish diaspora, this map of the Boston Irish Heritage Trail is well worth a look.

Are there any more good maps of the Irish diaspora out there? I’ll post more if I find them!

Where are the electoral reform proposals?

Tuesday, July 13th, 2010

Where are the electoral reform proposals? We know that proposals for emigrant voting rights in presidential elections have been promised as part of the Programme for Government. First we were told that electoral reform proposals would be presented before April, then before summer, and now with the Dail going off for its 12-weeks of summer holidays, we’re told that electoral reform remains a priority for autumn. Good to hear.

Meanwhile in India, serious moves are being made toward bringing to fruition the Indian prime minister’s intention to allow expats to vote in elections back home. The significance of this, of course, is that Indian diaspora policies are widely regarded as being among the most progressive in the world – Ireland has few peers in successful diaspora engagement, but India is one of the few countries that does it better than we do. It would be impossible for our policy makers not to take note, as we are left more and more conspicuously part of a dwindling number of nations that allow expats no voice in their home countries.

Update: Electoral proposal reforms have been announced. Most surprisingly, they did not include the possibility of voting in presidential elections that had been promised.

Does emigration make us sympathetic to immigrants?

Tuesday, July 13th, 2010

This editorial on emigration and immigration in the Irish Examiner is way off the mark. It starts off reasonably enough, noting that our “cyclical dependency on emigration is our greatest social failure since the foundation of the state”. It goes on to highlight some of the more painful aspects of emigration. And then it says:

This emotional evisceration has marked Ireland, but it has left us with an understanding of the separation and loss central to economic emigration. That understanding is at the root of the relative ease at which very many of those who came to this country to build new lives found places for themselves and their families. There has been exploitation and it continues today but, by and large, racism has not become a huge issue. It is recognised that we cannot expect the emigrant Irish to find a warm welcome in their new homes, if we do not extend the same generosity to those who choose to live here.

This is a problematic leap: The notion that the people who remain in Ireland and make up the bulk of Irish society have developed a particular empathy with migrants, whether inward or outward, is highly questionable. Many Irish commentators regard the Irish abroad with an attitude of gaping incomprehension. We think so little of our Irish abroad that we take away their right to vote as soon as they emigrate. It is only in the last decade that we took any responsibility for the welfare of our vulnerable citizens abroad – for decades we benefited from the generosity of emigrants with their remittances, while ignoring those who might have needed our help.

And 80% of us responded to an increasing number of immigrants in the country by changing our constitution to remove the automatic entitlement to citizenship of all children born in the State. It took only about a decade of net inward migration to make us alter one of our most basic notions of who can be part of our society. It’s difficult to see any generosity in that move.

And the notion that we in Ireland would seek to treat our own immigrants well in the hope that somehow (through an act of karmic justice, say) our emigrants would find a warmer welcome abroad is just bizarre. Is there any evidence to suggest that we who stay at home contemplate the warmth of the welcome that our young people experience? If we did, perhaps we might be more troubled by the fact that funding to emigrant groups was cut by 14% in the last budget, during a time of rising outward migration.