Why didn't Kevin Keegan play for Ireland? Contrasting narratives of the Irish in Britain

Abstract

This article considers a range of contrasting narratives about the Irish in Britain that are sometimes overlapping and sometimes contradictory. These narratives reflect the complexity of the Irish immigrant experience itself, from integration to alienation, and help to explain the persistence of cultural stereotypes. The contradictory nature of this experience also helps to understand the ways in which the Irish have contributed to wider popular culture in Britain, especially in the case of the second-generation Irish who came of age in the 1970s and 1980s.

Keywords:

• immigration
• migration
• diasporic culture
• British-Irish
• hybridity
• popular culture

Notes

 1. Keegan, My Autobiography, 44.

 2. Keegan, My Autobiography, 166.

 3. Keegan, My Autobiography, 41.

 4. Keegan, My Autobiography, 184.

 5. O’Sullivan, Patterns of Migration, xx.

 6. Fitzgerald, ‘“Like Crickets”’.

 7. McKenna, ‘Irish Migration to Argentina’.

 8. Boyd, ‘Policing Representations’.

 9. Bardon, History of Ulster, 673–4.

10. Sunday Times Insight Team, Ulster, 148.

11. Kimmage, Full Time, 177–83.

12. Cameron, ‘Scotland Must Cap Andy Driver’.

13. Davies, All Played Out, 221.

14. Cameron, ‘Scotland Must Cap Andy Driver’.

15. Arrowsmith, ‘Plastic Paddies’, 475.

16. Cameron, ‘Scotland Must Cap Andy Driver’.

17. Dunphy, ‘Why Charlton's Men are the Guardians of Irish Identity’.

18. McWilliams, ‘March of the HiBrits’.

19. McWilliams, ‘March of the HiBrits’

20. McWilliams, ‘March of the HiBrits’

21. Campbell, ‘Race of Angels’, 166 (original emphasis).

22. Campbell, ‘Race of Angels’, 165.

23. Anthony Andrew, ‘The Killers of Baby P Came from Decades of Abuse and Dysfunction’, The Observer, 16 August 2009, 17.

24. Wainwright, ‘Shannon Mathews Kidnap’.

25. Wainwright, ‘Profiles’.

26. Fitzgerald, ‘“Like Crickets”’; Busteed, ‘Songs in a Strange Land’; Walter, Outsiders Inside; Greenslade, ‘White Skins, White Masks’.

27. Walter, Outsiders Inside; Greenslade, ‘White Skins, White Masks’.