‘Generation Emigration’: the politics of (trans)national social reproduction in twenty-first-century Ireland

Abstract

Placing social reproduction at the heart of the experience of migration, this article attempts to move beyond regulatory discourses of emigration as tragedy, lifestyle choice or ‘the Skype generation’. Following a review of feminist literature on social reproduction, the article returns to research with Irish women migrants and non-migrants in the 1990s to demonstrate how technologically mediated ‘time-space compression’ and its promise of transnational proximity actually gave rise to the experience of gendered ‘time-space expansion’. The Irish Times' ‘Generation Emigration’ (GE) project is then introduced as a site in which similar gendered dynamics emerge as contemporary technologically mediated connections between emigrants and the homeland are celebrated through a compensatory (trans)nationalist discourse that competes with but also compensates for framings of emigration as national tragedy. The article suggests that discourses of emigration as tragedy, lifestyle choice, or new globalised practice serve to bring emigration into being in circumscribed ways and to produce emigrants as particular kinds of ‘recognisable’ subjects. It asks how the work of social reproduction in the context of emigration might be posed anew in ways that challenge dominant assumptions regarding the location and composition of the population to be reproduced. By moving beyond these regulatory discourses of emigration, and by emphasising the dynamics of technologically mediated transnational social reproduction, the article identifies the racialised heteronormative assumptions that intersect with national and global projects of economic production and social reproduction to produce uneven gendered effects.

Keywords:

• social reproduction
• transnational
• (e)migration
• mobility
• time-space compression
• time-space expansion
• gender
• Ireland

Acknowledgements

Research for this article was funded by the FFI 2012-35872 grant awarded by the Spanish Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad.

Notes

 1. Central Statistics Office (CSO), Population and Migration Estimates – April 2009.

 2. Out of an overall figure of 65,000 out-migrants, Irish nationals made up 18,400 (CSO).

 3. The numbers for Irish nationals was up from 18,400 in 2009 to 27,700 (CSO).

 4. Irish nationals accounted for approximately 40,000 of the overall figure of 76,400. CSO, Population and Migration Estimates – April 2010 and Population and Migration Estimates – April 2011.

 5. O'Brien, ‘Irish Emigration a Fact of Life’.

 6. Ryan, ‘St. Patrick's Day 2012’.

 7. CSO, Women and Men in Ireland, 2011.

 8. See the following contributions to The Irish Times GE project: Fraser, ‘Talking to your Wife only through a Computer is Hard’ (Stephen Fraser describes his life in Brisbane, where he got a twelve-month engineering contract, while his wife Rachel stayed in Ireland); Scanlon, ‘All I knew about Afghanistan was years of war’ (Noel Scanlon describes working in Afghanistan while his wife and children are in Ireland); Taplin, ‘I Want to Find a Way to be a 52-Week Daddy Again’ (James Taplin left his wife, son and daughter to return to Dubai to find work. His wife wants to stay in Ireland).

 9. O'Brien, ‘Irish Emigration a Fact of Life’.

10. Gilmartin, ‘Predicted Exodus from Ireland has not Taken Place’.

11. Gilmartin, ‘Predicted Exodus from Ireland has not Taken Place’

12. McGreevy, ‘Emigrants Need the Option to Come Home, not Pity’.

13. McGreevy, ‘Emigrants Need the Option to Come Home, not Pity’

14. McGreevy, ‘Emigrants Need the Option to Come Home, not Pity’

15. MacÉinrí, Letter to The Irish Times; Loscher, ‘Profiling of Irish Emigrant Population a Difficult Task’.

16. Sheridan, ‘The New Diaspora Speaks’.

17. Gray, Women and the Irish Diaspora; Ryan, ‘Navigating the Emotional Terrain of Families “Here” and “There”’.

18. McGreevy, ‘Emigrants Need the Option to Come Home, not Pity’.

19. Ralph and Staeheli, ‘Home and Migration’, 523; see also Walter, Outsiders Inside.

20. McGreevy, ‘Emigrants Need the Option to Come Home, not Pity’.

21. The Irish Examiner , ‘Noonan’.

22. The Irish Examiner , ‘Noonan’ This debate was reminiscent of the controversy that ensued in 1987 when the Tanáiste, Brian Lenihan, in an interview with Newsweek magazine, suggested that 1980s emigration was ‘not a defeat’ because the more they expanded their skills and talents abroad the better they might ‘be applied in Ireland when they return. After all, we can't all live on a small island’ (Newsweek, 10 October 1987).

23. TD stands for Teachta Dála which is a member of Dáil Éireann (lower house of the Oireachtas – Irish parliament) and is equivalent to the term Member of Parliament or MP.

24. Cullen and McGreevy, ‘Apologise for Remarks on Exiles’.

25. ‘Editorial – Noonan's Truth’; McGee, ‘Noonan Criticised for Remarks about Young Emigrants’.

26. VoIP stands for ‘voice over Internet Protocol’ and includes ‘Skype’, while Internet telephony refers to communications services – voice, fax, SMS (short message service and can be exchanged between fixed lines and mobiles) and/or voice-messaging applications via the Internet. Social media include web-based and mobile-based technologies that turn communication into interactive dialogue. They include Facebook, Twitter, blogs, YouTube, wikis, podcasts and Internet forums.

27. McClintock, Imperial Leather.

28 Transnational is used here to refer to how migrants ‘“live their lives across international borders” [as …] people who claim and are claimed by two or more nation-states, into which they are incorporated as social actors, one of which is widely acknowledged to be their state of origin’ (Glick Schiller, ‘Transmigrants and Nation-states’, 96).

29. Of course, gender norms are shaped by and intersect with those of class, race and others but these intersections can be addressed only briefly within this article.

30. I use the term ‘production/consumption’ to indicate their intertwined nature in post-industrial capitalist society in which consumption is not just about the purchase of goods and services but is built into the production process through the ways in which goods and services are promoted and aestheticised during and after purchase.

31. Kenny, ‘Starting Today’.

32. Katz, ‘On the Grounds of Globalization’ and ‘Lost and Found’; Kofman, ‘Rethinking Care through Social Reproduction’.

33. Katz, ‘On the Grounds of Globalization’; McGuirk and Dowling, ‘Governing Social Reproduction in Masterplanned Estates’; Kofman, ‘Rethinking Care through Social Reproduction.’

34. Katz ‘On the Grounds of Globalization’.

35. Ferguson, ‘Canadian Contributions to Social Reproduction Feminism, Race and Embodied Labor’, 45.

36. Ferguson, ‘Canadian Contributions to Social Reproduction Feminism, Race and Embodied Labor’, 25.

37. Ferguson, ‘Canadian Contributions to Social Reproduction Feminism, Race and Embodied Labor’, 47.

38. Ferguson, ‘Canadian Contributions to Social Reproduction Feminism, Race and Embodied Labor’, 48.

39. Kofman, ‘Rethinking Care through Social Reproduction’, 144.

40. Katz, ‘The State Goes Home’, 53.

41. Katz, ‘The State Goes Home’, 3.

42. Katz, ‘Lost and Found’, 23.

43. Munck, ‘Ireland in the World’, 7.

44. Katz ‘Lost and Found’, 22.

45. Katz, Growing up Global.

46. See The Irish Times GE project: Fraser, ‘Talking to your Wife only through a Computer is Hard’; Scanlon, ‘All I Knew about Afghanistan was Years of War’; Taplin, ‘I Want to Find a Way to be a 52-Week Daddy Again’.

47. Katz, ‘Lost and Found’, 25.

48. Munck, ‘Ireland in the World’, 7.

49. , ‘“The Network State”’ and ‘Redefining the Nation through Economic Growth and Migration’.

50. In 1999, the Tánaiste (deputy prime minister) Mary Harney suggested that economic necessity in itself would enable the achievement of real gender equality in the business world. In the same year, a series of measures, including individualisation of the income tax system and tax incentives to encourage women to return to paid employment, were introduced by the government. However, there was a public outcry against these initiatives which were portrayed as an attack on the family and a devaluation of women's work within the home. They were eventually withdrawn and reintroduced in modified form the following year. See Gray, Women and the Irish Diaspora, chapter 1.

51. Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity.

52. Katz, Growing up Global.

53. Gray, Women and the Irish Diaspora, 97.

54. Gray, Women and the Irish Diaspora, 99.

55. Ní Laoire, ‘Complicating Host–Newcomer Dualisms’.

56. Gray, Women and the Irish Diaspora, 115.

57. McGreevy, ‘Emigrants Need the Option to Come Home, not Pity’.

58. Kenny, ‘Starting Today’.

59. Of the sixty contributors between 22 October 2011 and 31 January 2012, there were thirty-five men and twenty-five women, and most were middle class.

60. Kenny, ‘Starting Today’.

61. Kenny, ‘Starting Today’

62. ‘Editorial – Generation Emigration’.

63. Komito qtd in Kenny, ‘Starting Today’.

64. Komito qtd in Kenny, ‘Starting Today’

65. Kenny, ‘Starting Today’.

66. Kenny, ‘Starting Today’

67. Licoppe, ‘“Connected” Presence’, 150.

68. Licoppe, ‘“Connected” Presence’, 147.

69. Kenny, ‘Starting Today’.

70. Kenny, ‘Starting Today’

71. Cahalan, ‘I Used the Church’.

72. Calahan, ‘I Used the Church’

73. Bakker and Gill, ‘Global Political Economy and Social Reproduction’, 6.

74. Licoppe, ‘“Connected” Presence’, 23.

75. Licoppe, ‘“Connected” Presence’, 139.

76. Haughton, ‘Do you Have “Skype Dates” across the World?’ (Kim Haughton notes that he started ‘having dinner’ with his friend in Australia over Skype. They would decide what they were going to cook, and source ingredients locally before cooking dinner together over video link).

77. Fouron and Glick Schiller, ‘All in the Family’, 571.

78. Keogh, ‘From One Island to Another’.

79. Bradford, ‘The Lights can be Turned Back on for Emigrants’.

80. Collins, ‘Emigrants Leaving by Choice, not Necessity’.

81. Ahmed et al., ‘Introduction’, 5.

82. Nash, Of Irish Descent, 11.

83. See Dublin photographer David Monahan's ‘Leaving Dublin’ project for a more multicultural, multi-nodal and circulatory representation of contemporary emigration that opens up new ways of understanding social reproduction. http://davidmonahan.viewbook.com/leaving-dublin-projections (This project was covered by the GE project. See http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/features/2011/1202/1224308464346.htm) (accessed 2 February 2012).

84. Katz, ‘Lost and Found’, 21.

85. Katz, Cindi ‘Vagabond Capitalism’ p. 713.

86. Barrett and Goggin, ‘Returning to the Question of a Wage Premium for Returning Migrants’.

87. Katz, ‘Hiding the Target’.

88. Ahmed et al., ‘Introduction’, 1.

89. Ferguson, ‘Canadian Contributions to Social Reproduction Feminism, Race and Embodied Labor’, 51.