Multiculturalism and the immigrant “Irish woman” after the Celtic Tiger: marginalisation, gender-based violence and family dysfunction in Ebun Akpoveta’s Trapped: Prison Without Walls

The research carried out for the writing of this article has been financed by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO, research project FFI2011-23941).

Abstract

This article breaks new ground in examining how “new Irish” immigrant women have responded to the collapse of Ireland’s Celtic Tiger economy and the different forms of gender discrimination and marginalisation they face both within their minority ethnic communities and the Irish host society. It approaches Ebun Akpoveta’s Trapped: Prison Without Walls (2013) as an exemplary work of fiction which exposes unresolved injustices and inequalities suffered by immigrant women. Akpoveta creates a narrative that complicates previous representations of cultural encounters between newcomers and long-established members of Ireland’s host society, not least because her Nigerian female protagonist arrives as a postgraduate student rather than an asylum seeker or refugee. She fictionalises female experiences of marginalisation, gender-based violence and family dysfunction within an all-Nigerian family that outwardly appears to be a model of integration and social inclusion in an open and welcoming Irish multicultural society.

Keywords:

• Immigrant women
• post-Celtic Tiger period
• marginalisation
• gender-based violence
• multiculturalism

Funding

The research carried out for the writing of this article was financed by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO, research project FFI2011-23941).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

The research carried out for the writing of this article has been financed by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO, research project FFI2011-23941).

1. Faragó, “‘I Am the Place,’” 145.

2. See Longley and Kiberd, Multi-culturalism; Reddy, “Reading and Writing”; Fanning, Immigration and Social Change; González-Arias et al., “New Irish”; Villar-Argáiz, Literary Visions.

3. Lentin has wondered whether the recession has actually changed the “pretence of integrationism”, as since 2008 there has been a “lack of interest” in “immigration, interculturalism and integration [which] played no part in the 2011 elections campaign”. Lentin, “Introduction,” 7–8.

4. Faragó, “‘I Am the Place,’” 145.

5. Feldman and Mulhall, “Towing the Line.”

6. Subsequent references will be as GBV.

7. See Mac Gréil, Pluralism and Diversity; particularly chapter 14 on the Irish family and attitudes towards women, although there is no reference to representations. For a more thorough analysis on representation of immigrant women and their children see Meaney, Gender, Ireland and Cultural Change. See also Ruhs and Quinn, “Ireland”; Mac Gréil, Pluralism and Diversity; Fanning and Munck, Globalization, Migration and Social Transformation; Lentin and Moreo, Migrant Activism.

8. Fanning, “Integration and Social Policy,” 243. One should not forget that multiculturalism and many of its related issues were also studied before the Celtic Tiger years including not only the “Traveller other” in Ireland but also the previous immigration of Jews and Hungarians to the Republic, and Indians and Chinese to Northern Ireland. Interesting approaches to the literature on and about the Traveller community are the plays by Rosaleen McDonagh; Lanters, “Tinkers” in Irish Literature.

9. Pierse, “Women, Fictional Messages,” 158.

10. King, “Irish Multicultural Fiction,” 159.

11. Villar-Argáiz, “Introduction,” 15.

12. That these discourses by immigrating women were left unattended contrasts with the idea that much writing by women during and after the Celtic Tiger was tackling different contemporary issues in Ireland with regard to the identity of the “Irish Woman”. As Mary Pierse believes, “negotiation of economic, religious, educational and social environments, attitudes to family and children, perceived constraints, relationship difficulties” have appeared in much writing by Irish women during recent decades. Pierse, “Women: Fictional Messages,” 148.

13. De Tona, “Investing in Hope?,” 109.

14. See the research by Sara Martín-Ruiz on representations of asylum seekers and refugees by Dimbo and Okorie. For detailed work on Direct Provision Centres see Iroh, “Framing the Nigerian,” 274–356. In an interview with Ifedinma Dimbo, the Nigerian writer claims that “the nuanced racialization of these people that seems to be embedded in the fabric of the micro and macro structures of the Irish society is more insidious”. For Dimbo, as an African person of colour, you do not expect to blend as to become a full member of the moral community; our skin colour demands that we must have a different worldview, different behaviour, different ways of doing etc., from the Irish. Setting people apart, ultimately impacts on them making it impossible for them to access the limit of their aspirations. (Martín-Ruiz, “Way the Irish Asylum System,” 114)

15. De Tona, “Investing in Hope?,” 95.

16. Ibid., 95–6.

17. Fanning, “Introduction,” 1.

18. See Breda O’Brien’s listing of changes in the conception of the Irish family. She refers to different changes, types and nomenclature of families and dysfunction: “family processes”, “family structure”, “family breakdown”, “family dysfunction”, and “family diversity”. O’Brien, “Modern Families,” 19–20.

19. Akpoveta, Trapped, 2.

20. Ibid., 3.

21. Garner, “Babies, Bodies and Entitlement.”

22. Shandy, “Irish Babies, African Mothers,” 822.

23. Ibid., 803. De Tona believes that because women are seen as “biological and cultural reproducers of their communities”, they often constitute “negative and damaging” representations and constructions of migration within the Irish discourse. De Tona, “Investing in Hope?,” 95–6.

24. Akpoveta, Trapped, 3.

25. Ibid.

26. Ibid.

27. Shandy, “Irish Babies, African Mothers,” 814.

28. Iroh, “Framing the Nigerian,” 363.

29. Akpoveta, Trapped, 5.

30. Ibid., 21.

31. Ibid.

32. Ibid., 29.

33. Ibid., 37.

34. Many non-governmental organisations in Ireland are already fighting GBV and family dysfunction in this respect: NASC, Women’s Aid, AkiDwa or the ICGBV. Some of them, such as AkiDwA have special reports and actions with regard to GBV and dysfunction against African women in Ireland.

35. Lichtsinn and Veale, “Between ‘Here’ and ‘There,’” 99.

36. Akpoveta, Trapped, 210.

37. Feldman, “Facing All the Others,” 259.

38. Ibid., 271.

39. Ibid.

40. Akpoveta, Trapped, 84.

41. Ibid., 85.

42. Ibid., 90.

43. Ibid., 200.

44. Ibid., 202.

45. Although Akpoveta sets her comparison against the backdrop of the closest Nigerian community, which still reproduces hierarchical modes in their “host” country Ireland, one should not forget that many women’s associations, particularly those set up by Nigerian women in Ireland, have been an “active and agentic role in contesting and redefining boundaries and hierarchies of belonging”. De Tona, “Investing in Hope?,” 96.

46. Iroh, “Instability of Community,” 74.

47. In many instances, female activist groups in Ireland have acted against the replication of these structures that maintain the patriarchal hierarchies of their countries of origin. See De Tona and Lentin, “Networking Sisterhood.”

48. Iroh, “Instability of Community,” 77. See Iroh’s doctoral dissertation in which he expands on the way in which women were included in the meetings of the Nigerian community in Ireland. Some of Akpoveta’s main complaints about the marginalisation of women can be framed within the replication of many of the traditions that were still held from their country of origin. Iroh, “Framing the Nigerian,” especially 80–132.

49. Allen, “Violence and Voice,” 24. AkiDwA has published reports in which the issue of domestic violence amongst the migrant community in Ireland has been studied. One of the key elements of these studies has been the influence of the extended family on the lives of migrant women. Fear and stigma seemed to inform the realities of these migrant women who were still under the influence of the patriarchal societies they were coming from. There were also many references to domestic violence and child abuse in the cases of migrant women in Ireland. One of the latest reports can be found in AkiDwA, We Lived to Tell.

50. Mikowski, “‘What Does a Woman Want?,’” 89.

51. De Tona, “Investing in Hope?,” 96.

52. Ibid., 111.

53. Conrad, Locked in the Family Cell, 10.

54. Faragó, “‘I Am the Place,’” 163.