Migration and the Making of Ireland

Reviews / Votes

'This new work by Bryan Fanning, Professor of Migration and Social Policy at UCD is a very important and welcome addition to the history of migration in relation to Ireland. It is important for a number of reasons.'; Barry Sheppard in the Irish Story, August 2018.;'This is "the first comprehensive history of migration to and from the island of Ireland", according to the publisher's blurb. It certainly is comprehensive as it goes back to Neolithic times and up to more recent arrivals of Nigerians, Poles, Romanians and Muslims.';Joe Carroll in the Irish Catholic.; 'When the Celtic Tiger arrived and the EU expanded, larger numbers of people began to arrive came from elsewhere in Europe, and also from further afield - prominently Nigeria, India, China and Pakistan.;In relating the stories of these groups Fanning does an excellent job of painting contours of the big picture with broad strokes on historical movements and statistical trends, and then also zooming in on individual stories through first-person accounts by new arrivals.';Sam Tranum in The Dublin Inquirer, May 2018.;'The great James Joyce picked Leopold Bloom, a Jewish ad-seller of Hungarian parentage, as his modern 'Everyman' as well as his quintessential Irishman and Dubliner. In Ulysses, the wise Bloom declares that "a nation is the same people living in same place".;It is a wonderfully easy, 'live and let live', non-judgmental and generous view of what a country should be, and a suitable riposte to the toxic xenophobes who are on the rise in Europe today.;Fanning charts just how rich this experience can be.';Eamon Delaney in the Irish Independent, April 2018.; 'Some Muslims who came to Ireland as asylum seekers from countries like Somalia remain extremely marginalised. While most Muslims have integrated successfully, some are likely to see themselves as outsiders in Irish society.;The lessons from other European countries is these perceptions of exclusion cannot be allowed to fester.';Bryan Fanning in the Irish Independent, March 2018.; 'There is, I think, much to learn from the experiences of past generations of migrants and their families that can help us understand the challenges facing the Ireland of today. One of these lessons is that it is difficult to make progress unless the racism and injustice experienced by some is acknowledged and addressed.';Bryan Fanning in the Irish Examiner, March 2018.;'Nothing seems at times to be so conducive to human misery, as ham-fisted attempts to regulate the admission of refugees; whether by corralling them in camps for years at a time or deliberately impeding efforts they might make under their own steam to integrate into host societies.';Bryan Fanning in the Irish Times, March 2018.;'This book is particularly to be welcomed at a time when European ethno-nationalism of the ugliest kind is making a return across the continent in such countries as Russia, Hungary, France and even England. Fanning's book is a fresh and fascinating survey of nation-making, not as the affirmation of some kind of blood-right, but as ongoing conversation, occasional conflict, adaptation and change.';Piaras Mac Einri, The Irish Times, March 2018.;'For all intents and purposes, evidence of racism presented by NGOs and set out in research by academics is taken less seriously than during the early 1960s. At least those complaints were acknowledged by the then government.';Bryan Fanning featured on the thejournal.ie, March 2018.;'The kinds of wider circumstances that push and pull migrants from one place to another recur again and again - be it the 17th century or the 21st century';Bryan Fanning in the Belfast Telegraph, March 2018.;