BIFFOs, jackeens and Dagenham Yanks: county identity, “authenticity” and the Irish diaspora

Abstract

Despite being an everyday point of reference in Irish discourse, the extent to which the county serves as a locus of identification has been oddly overlooked in the Irish studies literature. In particular, the persistence of identification with the county of origin post-migration offers new insights on the construction and maintenance of identity within the Irish diaspora. Drawing on my PhD research on discourses of authenticity and identity among the Irish in England, this article investigates the ways in which county identity is invoked both by Irish migrants and those of Irish descent. It illustrates how the county is used as a rhetorical tool to situate the speaker within discourses of belonging and authenticity, but how this may also act as a constraint on the articulation of a collective, diasporic identity. It argues for a greater research focus on translocalism within the context of changing Ireland–diaspora relations.

Keywords:

• identity
• diaspora
• transnationalism
• translocalism
• second-generation migrants
• hybridity
• authenticity
• Irish counties
• Gaelic Games

Notes

 1. Tom Gilmore, “Overseas Workers Take Railway Trip of a Lifetime,” Irish Times, December 23, 2011, 3.

 2. Nagle, “‘Everybody is Irish on St. Paddy's’”; Scully, “Whose Day is it Anyway?”

 3. The more usual use of BIFFO is to denote Big Ignorant Fecker From Offaly.

 4. See www.irelandxo.com.

 5. McGonigle, “Cork Passport to be Proposed.” The “People's Republic website” is a reference to the locally influential www.peoplesrepublicofcork.com.

 6. Erickson, “The Importance of Authenticity for Self and Society.”

 7. For further detail, see Scully, “Discourses of Authenticity and National Identity among the Irish Diaspora in England”; and Scully, “The Tyranny of Transnational Discourse.”

 8. O'Connor, Seeing through Counties.

 9. Daly, “The County in Irish History,” 4.

10. O'Connor, Seeing through Counties.

11. Although, as highlighted in Cronin, Duncan, and Rouse's The GAA: County by County, this was a more organic process than might be assumed, and subsequently did not go unchallenged, with the Gaelic Athlete newspaper questioning the appropriateness of the use of counties “of varied sizes and most irregular and absurd shapes”.

12. F. McNally, “An Irishman's Diary,” The Irish Times, May 30, 2007, 17.

13. The Local Government Commission for England's 1992–1995 Structural Review found geographically uneven and not particularly strong levels of county identification, compared to other forms of local/regional identification across England. See also Bond and McCrone, “The Growth of English Regionalism”; Cope, Bailey, and Atkinson, “Restructuring Local Government in Hampshire”; and Royle, “Regions and Identities.”

14. One of the reasons given by Kilkenny County Council in rejecting a boundary extension proposal by Waterford City Council was that it would “alter the community, cultural and sporting identity of the area and the County”.

15. Billig, Banal Nationalism.

16. Gillmor, “The County.”

17. Whelan, “The Bases of Regionalism.”

18. The association of certain neighbourhoods in London with particular counties has left a cultural legacy of sorts on both sides of the Irish Sea. For example, The Bible Code Sundays' song “The Green and Red of Harrow” celebrates the links between Harrow and Mayo. Meanwhile, the figure of the “Dagenham Yanks”, referring to transnational migrants between the Ford plants in Cork and Dagenham, still holds a place in Corkonian lore.

19. Walter, “Tradition and Ethnic Interaction,” 278.

20. Dunne, An Unconsidered People.

21. Cowley, The Men Who Built Britain, 196.

22. For a comprehensive history of the Irish County Associations in London and New York, see Nyhan, “Comparing Irish Migrants and County Associations in New York and London.” I am also grateful to Nicole McLennan of London Metropolitan University for sharing some of the preliminary findings from her ongoing research project on London's County Associations.

23. McLennan, “Irish Connections.”

24. Harrison, The Scattering; McLennan, “Irish Connections.”

25. Nyhan, “Comparing Irish Migrants,” 127.

26. Gray, Women and the Irish Diaspora; Rossiter, Ireland's Hidden Diaspora.

27. Gillmor, “The County”; O'Connor, “The Multiple Experiences of Migrancy”; O Briain, Tickling the English.

28. D. McConnell, “Frustrated Oz Locals Lash Out at Backpackers from the Wild ‘County Bondi,’” The Sunday Independent, January 10, 2010; Ryan, “In the Green Fields of Kilburn.” The singer-songwriter Liam Byrne has recently released a song about contemporary Irish migration to Australia entitled “County Bondi,” whereas the website www.countybondi.com describes the area as the “new 33rd county of Ireland” and sells a range of replica GAA jerseys that reflect this.

29. Gray, “Irish Women in London”; Hickman et al., “The Limitations of Whiteness”; Leonard, “Performing Identities”; Walter, Outsiders Inside.

30. Gray, Women and the Irish Diaspora, 111.

31. Kells, “‘I'm Myself and Nobody Else,’” 211.

32. Trew, “Reluctant Diasporas of Northern Ireland,” 552.

33. Nyhan, “Comparing Irish Migrants,” 206.

34. Kneafsey and Cox, “Food, Gender and Irishness,” 12.

35. McCarthy, “Enacting Irish Identity in Western Australia,” 376.

36. Sala, Dandy, and Rapley, “‘Real Italians and Wogs.’”

37. Harney, “Building Italian Regional Identity”; Maira, “Identity Dub.”

38. James, “Migration, Racism and Identity Formation,” 240.

39. Nash, Of Irish Descent.

40. Scully, “The Tyranny of Transnational Discourse.”

41. Hickman et al., “The Limitations of Whiteness.”

42. Scully, “The Tyranny of Transnational Discourse.”