From ‘flood’ to ‘trickle’: Irish migration to Britain 1987–2006

Abstract

A dramatic change in the size and direction of emigration from Ireland has taken place over the past 20 years. The most striking feature is the sharp decline in movement to Britain from the Republic of Ireland, a traditional supplier of labour for well over 200 years. By contrast there has been a small increase in emigration from Northern Ireland, an important element of which is higher education students from Protestant backgrounds, who may be permanent migrants. Detailed statistics available from the Central Statistics Office of the Republic of Ireland show that proportionately more women have left as gross numbers have declined. This reflects the persistence of social, rather than predominantly economic, causes of emigration, also evident in the range of socially excluded people for whom Britain represents a ‘safety valve’. Two groups now characterise the Irish population in Britain; the ageing 1950s cohort and their children and grandchildren, the large second and third generations.

Keywords:

• Irish emigration
• Britain
• gender
• Irish-born immigrants
• vulnerable migrants

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Alan Barrett (ESRI) and Sarah Morgan for comments on this paper, and to John Walsh for producing the diagrams.

Notes

1. For an early example see Ravenstein (1885, 1889). There are many examples of usage by geographers, one being Kosinski and Prothero (1975), p. 2).

2. Damien Courtney (2000) describes the processes by which this change was introduced in the late 1980s. The CSO/ONS report (1998) elaborates on the procedures used to estimate migration flows between the Republic of Ireland and Britain. Provisional annual figures are produced for inter-censal periods and adjusted in the light of data from the full Census. Since modifications were introduced in 1994 the fit between the two has improved sharply. The annual figures are now thought to be close to the Census baseline (personal communication, Aidan Punch, Chief Statistician, CSO, Dublin, February 2007).

3. More detailed analysis may be made of NHSCR (National Health Service Central Register) record transfers (see for example Compton 1992), but these have many deficiencies as a migration data source (CSO/ONS 1998, p. 22).

4. Church of Ireland (including Protestant) 115,611; Presbyterians 20,582; Methodists 10,033.