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Silicon Valley entrepreneur urges diaspora to transform NI tech sector

Wednesday, June 10th, 2009

Northern Ireland’s diaspora can play a pivotal role in rebranding Northern Ireland as a “software destination”, says David Kirk, a Belfast-born executive in Silicon Valley.

Writing a call to action in today’s Belfast Telegraph, Kirk says it’s time to make a bold transformation to capitalise on the great talent and passion among entrepreneurs, technologists and potential business leaders. He sees the talent; what’s lacking in the North is the know-how to progress the ideas, talent and drive into “something that will make the world drop its jaw”.

He envisions the diaspora playing a key role:

Aggressively reach out to the diaspora. Invite them in. Listen to them. If you are reading this anywhere on the planet and you have a connection (or even feel you have a connection) to Northern Ireland, you are invited. If you are in Northern Ireland and can provide time, resources or expertise then you are invited. It’s no good just cheering (or sneering) from the sidelines anymore.

Kirk notes, “The most successful Northern Ireland technology entrepreneurs no longer live there, but almost all want to give back.”

This compelling call-to-action is the latest in a series of initiatives aimed at focusing the talent of the diaspora to help back at home.  This is exciting stuff – technology is facilitating so many new ways of rapidly channelling the diaspora’s good will into effective action back home.

Related sites:

• Belfast Telegraph: Surely it’s now time to raise the game for our technology industries
• twitter.com/AAligNI
• Linkedin: AaligNI
• Facebook group: AAligNI

Article traces transformation of Setanta from ethnic niche to global competitors

Tuesday, June 9th, 2009

Broadcasting company Setanta’s rise from a niche broadcaster focused on providing Irish sports to an expat audience to a major competitor in the global sports broadcasting arena is outlined in a report on the BBC today. Setanta is attracting attention because it is floundering financially and may be forced into administration.

Business reporter Bill Wilson writes:

Two decades ago sports broadcaster Setanta started life in an Irish dance hall in west London, showing the Republic of Ireland’s 1990 World Cup game against Holland after the BBC and ITV declined to broadcast the game in the UK.

It cost just £10 admission to watch that game in Ealing’s Top Hat club and Setanta’s two Irish founders, Michael O’Rourke and Leonard Ryan, managed to break even after 1,000 Irish fans turned up to watch the game.

Read the entire article on the BBC website: Why Setanta Sports is in trouble.

“I never thought I’d have to leave”, says 23-year-old London-based emigrant

Tuesday, June 9th, 2009

A quick, disturbing vignette excerpted from Olivia O’Leary’s “Viewpoint” article on the BBC website.

For James Mooney, 23, and his generation, the crash is particularly galling.

While Mr Mooney was studying to be a surveyor, his lecturer told them they would all be millionaires by the time they were 35, such was the construction and property boom at the time.

Instead he is one of the new breed of Irish emigrants, living in a house in London with five other Irish people in their twenties, in a position none of them ever dreamed they would face.

“Getting dropped back to Dublin airport, that’s when it hits home, that you’re leaving again,” says Mr Mooney.

“Sunday nights, flying back to London. I dread it.

“You see the same faces at the airport now. I never thought I’d have to leave.”

Read Olivia O’Leary’s article on the BBC website – “Ireland: boom to bust”

Photographer explores Irish-American loss, landscape

Tuesday, June 9th, 2009

An Irish-American artist’s exploration of her family’s emigrant heritage is on display at the Indiana State Museum’s “Making it in the Midwest” exhibition. Cynthia Dell’s project, called “Migrations”, features transparencies of old family photographs juxtaposed against a backdrop of the landscape of her ancestral home.

Several of the photos are available on her website. The artist says on the site, “In this work I am seeking to find beauty out of the loss that is the history of so many Irish Americans.” The images are haunting, as the ghostly figures of the photographs contrast with the bright, solid backgrounds.

O’Dell expands on her work in an article from Depauw University Press:

“I am trying to recreate my own family album in an impossible scenario, and as a result I am creating a new story,” O’Dell says. “Growing up, I was told that I was Irish. In Migrations, I was interested in posing the question, ‘How do I make sense of that identity?’ By symbolically taking my ancestors back to their native country, I attempted to complete the circle of their migration pattern – to convey loss while also exploring the redemptive and beautiful qualities of the Irish landscape in the midst of pain.”

The group exhibition is on display from June 20 to October 18.

Related websites:

• Migrations website
• Cindy O’Dell website
• Depauw University: “Capturing the Impossible”
• Making it in the Midwest exhibition website

Israel as a node-state: redefining the diaspora relationship

Tuesday, June 9th, 2009

Israel can be conceptualised as a ‘node-state’ at the centre of a diasporic network, according to an article on Haaretz.com. Ariel Beery notes that Israel differs from the typical nation state, in which a government brings together a variety of ethnic groups living within its borders:

The State of Israel, in this way, was doubly special – first because it claimed to be the state of the Jews even as the majority of the Jewish nation still lived outside its boundaries, and second because it had no desire to integrate other, non-Jewish groups among its citizenry into the Jewish nation. Israel has thus been criticized for not behaving like a classic nation-state. But it might also be wrestling with a challenge a bit ahead of its time: the separation of citizenship and residency, of state and nation.

If Israel is no nation-state, it might be more useful to think of it as a node-state – that is, as the sovereign element chosen by narrative and collective will at the center of a global network. Whereas the entire network is interdependent its center is currently restricted by our theory to operate as a nation-state. That is to say, the State of Israel might benefit from the global network, but in its functioning, most of its focus has been on basic domestic operations only, which affect only a small set of nodes on this network, and it permits only a minority of its network members to elect representatives whose decisions will affect the network as a whole. For example, even though Israel’s financial health depends just as much on foreign investment as it does on domestic production, it is the residents that determine the economic policy that affects the return on those investments – and thereby the network’s overall health. As populations shift, this same network effect facing Israel will face other nations as well.

Beery notes the importance of new thinking to deal with the reality of the need for a transformed relationship between Israel and the Jewish Diaspora. He quotes Ehud Olmert’s vision of the relationship: “We must stop talking in terms of big brother and little brother, and instead speak in terms of two brothers marching hand in hand and supporting each other.”

This new thinking is being addressed by the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute, which has been charged with the development of a new strategy for fiscal and programme relations with the diaspora, with the goal of strengthening Jewish identity.

This idea of the nation-state giving way to a node-state has implications for a country like Ireland, which says in its constitution, “the Irish nation cherishes its special affinity with people of Irish ancestry living abroad who share its cultural identity and heritage.” With millions of Irish citizens living abroad, and with efforts to enhance the relationship between Ireland and the diaspora and Ireland on the increase, it could be argued that Ireland, too, may be moving toward a node-state (albeit, I hope, a more inclusive one than Israel’s, which excludes some in its territory from citizenship).

Could Ireland be reconceived as a node-state including all on the island of Ireland, plus the 1.2 million Irish-born abroad, and the 70 million in the diaspora? And what would that mean in practical terms?

Related websites:

• Haaretz.com: From nation-state to node-state
• Jewish Poeple Policy Planning Institute

European group calls for EU Commissioner for European expats

Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009

Europeans Throughout the World has released a set of recommendations aimed at giving recognition and support to European citizens living outside their countries of origin. The recommendations, decided at the group’s 25th anniversary meeting in Stockholm this month (which I attended as an associate member on behalf of Ireland), concern such issues as the recognition of multiple nationalities, consular protection, and the harmonisation of family law.

Perhaps most significant is the call for a dedicated EU Commissioner for expatriate Europeans and an agency to monitor concerns. This resonates with Ireland’s recent experience in establishing the Irish Abroad Unit, and Ireland could perhaps be an instructive case study in establishing this type of initiative.

Most of the recommendations would be relatively uncontroversial here: Ireland  takes a particularly open approach to multiple citizenships, for example. But the recommendations call for expatriate citizens to be granted voting rights – a right granted to most European citizens, but not Irish nationals. The organisation notes that the current situation, in which some nations allow their non-EU resident expats to vote for representatives at European level and others do not, leads to inequality among European citizens.

Europeans Throughout the World is a non-governmental federation of national associations representing Europeans living outside their countries of origin.

The full text of the recommendations:

STOCKHOLM RECOMMENDATIONS

On the occasion of the 25th anniversary of their founding, The Europeans throughout the World, the confederation of associations of European expatriates, meeting in Stockholm at the kind invitation of the Federation Swedes Abroad, recalls that citizens of the European Union living in another country than their own throughout the world are estimated to number between 60 and 80 million, thus together forming the equivalent of a large member state, make very substantial contributions to Europe’s presence in the world, and should be considered a great asset for Europe.

The Europeans throughout the World urges European national governments and the institutions of the European Union, particularly the European Parliament,

• to give political and practical recognition and support to this large body of citizens, many of whom have a very high degree of international mobility, consistent with and often a consequence of the progress of the EU and their professional and societal role within it;

• to act upon the following recommendations, which proceed from over fifty-five years of experience of the EU and twenty-five years of action, and which also build upon and extend the Paris Declaration adopted at the Meeting of European Citizens resident outside their country of origin in Paris on 30 September 2008.

Voting rights – all expatriate European citizens should be given specific national and EU-level representation in order that their voices may be properly heard and their concerns, specific to their condition as expatriates, properly taken into account:

• All EU citizens should be given the right to vote in their national elections at national and regional level, and practical arrangements made to facilitate the convenience to the citizen, wherever he or she resides in the world, for example through proxy, postal and/or electronic voting mechanisms.
• All EU citizens should be given the right to choose to vote in European Parliament elections in their country of residence or of one of their EU nationalities, and practical arrangements made to facilitate the convenience to the citizen, wherever he or she resides in the world.

Multiple nationalities

• All EU citizens should be given the right to possess and to gain or regain multiple  nationalities to which they may have a claim, given the fundamental nature of nationality to the citizen and his or her means of livelihood.

Diplomatic and consular protection

• Full and uniform protection should be ensured to all EU citizens through the network of EU member states’ embassies and consulates throughout the world, irrespective of their nationalities and countries of residence.
• This should extend especially to prisoners, who are often particularly vulnerable – judicial proceedings in third countries should be closely monitored and full defence of the accused ensured. Wherever possible they should be able to purge their sentence in (one of) their own country(ies).

Social Security

• The right of patients to treatment in the country of their choice, regardless of the country(ies) in which they have paid their state and/or private health insurance contributions, should be ensured in practice, in line with the jurisprudence of the European Court of Justice.

Pensions

• The acquisition of state and supplementary pensions should be ensured in practice, and their payment ensured from the age of retirement, to all expatriate EU citizens, wherever they reside in the world, and existing EU legislation enforced and extended. Cases of multiple taxation need to be removed. Particular attention should be given to the situation of people who have followed their spouses abroad and may find their rights seriously curtailed.

Education

• The possibility of complementary education in one’s mother tongue should be extended to all children of expatriate EU citizens, allowing them to preserve the knowledge of their mother tongue and culture.

Mutual Recognition of Diplomas and Professional Training

• There are many diplomas and professional qualifications of EU member states which are not recognised in other EU countries. The ongoing efforts towards mutual recognition should be intensified and extended to further fields.

Justice

• Expatriate EU citizens should be guaranteed a legally indisputable choice of competent jurisdictions and simplified access to these.
• Family law should be harmonised and enforced, particularly in the areas of the consequences of divorce for children.
• Contradictions and multiple taxation should be removed from the area of succession and inheritance.

“European Referent� in the national public services

• A personalised “European Administrative Windowâ€? should be created within the national, regional and/or local administrations, fully aware of the legal and administrative aspects at EU level.

A European Commissioner and an Agency for expatriate Europeans

• Considering that the above concerns have not been fully addressed, we reiterate our recommendation that a Member of the European Commission should be given specific responsibility for expatriate EU citizens.
• All European Institutions should set up specific mechanisms to take account of the specific concerns of expatriate EU citizens.
• An agency should be created to take up these concerns on a permanent basis. It should be charged with monitoring and furthering all the above concerns, and should be given appropriate means to carry out these tasks.

Related website:

Europeans Throughout the World

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