‘I Had a Sister in England’: Family-Led Migration, Social Networks and Irish Nurses

Abstract

Despite the apparent gender-neutrality of many migration theories, there has been a tendency to configure economic migrants as male, especially within a European context. This has been exacerbated by an historical amnesia about women's patterns of migration. Until recently migrant women have been either ignored or subsumed into accounts of household migration or family reunification. Thus, men have been constructed as active, economic migrants, while women have been contained within domestic and familial roles. This paper seeks to complicate such a dichotomous construction by drawing upon the narratives of 26 Irish nurses who migrated to Britain in the postwar period. The women in this study present themselves as economic actors who made the pragmatic decision to migrate to Britain. Nonetheless, it is clear that they also were implicated in complex webs of family migration and kinship. However, far from the stereotypical image of household or nuclear family migration, these women's narratives reveal the range and diversity of transnational kinship ties. Most of the women were encouraged to migrate by female relatives, especially sisters, aunts and cousins. The paper concludes by considering the implications for an understanding of family-led migration.

Keywords:

• Family Migration
• Transnational Networks
• Women Migrants
• Irish Nurses

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank all the women who participated in this study. I am also grateful for the advice of my colleagues Eleonore Kofman and Mary Tilki and for the helpful comments of two anonymous JEMS referees.

Notes

1. Because many of the women came from farming backgrounds it is not easy to locate them within simple socio-economic class groupings. None of the women in my study came from wealthy families but none had experienced dire poverty either. It is possible to suggest that, post-migration, it was their status as skilled migrants rather than their socio-economic backgrounds in Ireland that became significant.

2. It has been suggested that Irish men have used social networks to secure employment and accommodation in Britain (Delaney 2005). Nonetheless, there is very little research on the kinship and friendship networks of Irish male migrants. Perhaps this reflects the dominance of economic explanations of male migration and the general paucity of research on men's friendship networks. Nonetheless, there is evidence to suggest the important role of kinship networks for the health and well-being of Irish men living in London (Ryan et al. 2006).

3. In a new ESRC-funded study, my colleagues and I are investigating the role of kinship and social networks in the migration strategies of recent Polish migrants to London. Our findings suggest that economic motives and family strategies are overlapping factors for many male and female migrants. A wide range of relatives, including siblings and cousins as well as friends, would also appear to be important in influencing migration decision-making among young Polish men and women (Ryan et al. 2007).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Louise Ryan

Louise Ryan is Deputy Director of the Social Policy Research Centre at Middlesex University