Northampton remembers Lucia at Bloomsday
Monday, May 21st, 2007An Irishman living in Northampton will lead a commemoration of Bloomsday at the grave of Lucia Joyce in Kingsthorpe cemetary in Northamption. Lucia Joyce, the daughter of exiled Irish writer James Joyce, spent many years in a mental hospital before her death in 1982. This will be the fourth Bloomsday the Irish Community Arts Project will spend at Lucia’s grave.
Organiser Peter Mulligan told the Irish Times,
The concept is that the Joyce family, like a lot of Irish people in Northampton, left Ireland for a better life elsewhere and we see Lucia as a focus for that. We relate her life to the Irish diaspora of which she was a part…
She’s buried among East Europeans, Serbs and Yugoslavs because she was born in Trieste. The nice thing is that she’s near the grave of (emigrant writer) Donall Mac Amhlaigh, who lived all his life here working on the M1, M6 and Milton Keynes.
For more information, contact the project.
US Senate makes deal on undocumented
Friday, May 18th, 2007Irish immigration advocates in the US have welcomed the agreement hammered out yesterday by Democratic and Republican senators, which would provide a channel for the 12 million undocumented immigrants to achieve legal status.
The proposals would allow for the vast majority of today’s undocumented to register, pay a fine of €5,000, and undergo security screenings; in return, they will get work authorisation, travel permission, and protection from deportation.
On the negative side, the bill includes a “touchback” provision, that would require undocumented immigrants to make a costly trip back to their home country to apply for adjustment. In addition, the deal will create a large number of workers with only temporary visas, which could lead to increasing numbers of undocumented in the future.
Perhaps the most dramatic change is the institution of a points system and the elimination of family ties as the foundation of immigration.
Sheila Gleeson of the Coalition of Irish Immigration Centers calls the deal “a major step forward”, and says that Senators Kennedy, Menendez, Feinstein, and Salazar are to be commended for getting this compromise hammered out”.
The bill will be debated in the Senate next week; once the Senate process is completed, the House of Representatives will take on the issue.
History of European Family conference: June 2007
Thursday, May 17th, 2007Diaspora is a major theme that will be discussed in the “History of the European Family Conference”, at University of Limerick on June 20-21, 2007.
Trinity College Professor David Fitzpatrick, author of “Oceans of Consolation: personal accounts of Irish migration to Australia” will be a plenary speaker. His talk is entitled “Far-flung families: How post-Famine Irish reconciled mass migration with family values”.
Other migration-related panels include “Diaspora and family business”, “Diaspora and ethnicity”, and “Globalisation and contemporary affairs”.
See the full programme at the University of Limerick’s History Department website.
BAIS conference: September 2007
Thursday, May 17th, 2007Returning Irish migrants will be the focus of a panel at the 2007 conference of the British Association for Irish Studies. The interdisciplinary BAIS conference takes place at the Institute of Irish Studies, University of Liverpool in September; the theme is ‘New Irelands”.
One panel will focus on “Return Migrants and Clashing Identities”. The following scholars will speak:
- Sara Hannafin, NUI Galway: The Idea of Ireland as ‘home’: Place, Identity and Second Generation Return Migration
- Sarah O’Brien, University of Limerick: A Second Exile: The Contested Identity of Irish Migrants in New Ireland
- David Ralph, University of Edinburgh: Reconceptualising Home and Belonging: Irish Transnational Return Migrants from the USA, 1996-2006
Another paper that will be of interest to migration scholars will be On Not Being Irish by Sarah Morgan of ESR2 Project and Bronwen Walter of Anglia Ruskin University.
See more information at the BAIS website.
Franco-Irish conference aims to create continued interchange
Tuesday, May 8th, 2007“Migration, Culture and Politics: A Franco-Irish Dialogue” will be be hosted by the Humanities Institute of Ireland, UCD, on May 14, 2007. Conference organisers promise “a unique platform for a comparative Franco-Irish dialogue on the economic and cultural implications of migration and related societal change. ” The event aims to create a network of academics and policy-makers linking Ireland and France in continued policy and intellectual interchange.
Speakers include Dr Bettinna Migge, Dr Alice Feldman, and Dr Steven Loyal, all of UCD; Dr Isabelle Léglise, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris; Dr William Berthomiére, MIGRINTER, Université de Poitiers; Dr Christophe Bertossi, Institute Francaise des Relations Internationales, Paris; and Piaras MacÉinri, University College Cork.
More information is available on the UCD website.
Drogheda exhibition looks at lives of US undocumented
Wednesday, March 28th, 2007The lives of the undocumented Irish in the US are explored in a new photo exhibition opening at the Highlanes Gallery in Drogheda. “Far from home: A chronicle of the undocumented Irish in the United States” is a collection of images by Drogheda-born, New York-based photographer Seán McPhail. The exhbition is sponsored by the Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform.
It runs from March 30 to April 27.
See more at the Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform website.
Visit the Highlanes Gallery.