TCD Academic Symposium: Irish Migration Today and Yesterday

Posted on: 10 April 2013

The motivations, identities and movements of the new generation of Irish migrants were explored by four leading social scientists at the Trinity Week Academic Symposium on Wednesday, April 10, as part of the Trinity Week 2013 programme (http://www.tcd.ie/trinityweek/).

Contemporary Irish migrants are highly skilled and are seeking experience, adventure and improved quality of life as much as higher wages, according to Professor James Wickham, Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, who presented his research comparing Irish graduate emigration to that from Poland in the last decade at the symposium.

Entitled Irish Migration Today and Yesterday, the symposium is the centrepiece of Trinity Week 2013 (8th-12thApril), which is focusing on the social, cultural and economic perspectives of the Irish Diaspora. Organised by the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, Trinity Week comprises a diverse programme of themed academic and literary events exploring Irish migration past and present. All of the events are open to the public and free and are taking place across Trinity campus. Other, highlights include a treasure trail for young people, a mini film festival focusing on the representation of the Irish Diaspora on the silver screen and a celebration of poetry in translation by Seamus Heaney.

Speaking at the event Professor James Wickham, Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, said: “In Ireland we still often understand emigration in terms of the coffin ships and the emigrant wake. Yet emigration from Europe today is very different – at its simplest it is the skilled and the better educated who are most likely to emigrate. One way to understand what this involves is to look at the experience of the many young Polish people who came to Ireland during the Celtic Tiger boom; it turns out that they were the pioneers of forms of European emigration that we see now not just in Ireland but in other crisis countries such as Greece.”

“Today contemporary Irish emigration echoes Polish emigration in many ways. It is the more skilled and the better educated who are leaving. Migration today often takes the form of commuting, shorter term stays, circular and even serial migration rather than the traditional move-work-settle pattern of the past. It is not just jobs, but quality of life, gaining experience and even adventure that motivates Ireland’s present day migrants and for this new generation emigration, national identity is worn lightly and reflexively.”

Other speakers at the symposium were Professor Mary Corcoran, NUI Maynooth, who focused on what lessons can be learned from the 1980s’ “generation emigration”; Professor John Fitzgerald, from the ESRI, who presented on open labour markets and open economies and Professor Binod Khadria, from Jawaharlal Nehru University, who analysed global migration trends.