Life history and the Irish migrant experience in post-war England

This book makes innovative use of migrant life histories to further understanding the role of memory in the production of migrant identities.

Life history and the Irish migrant experience offers a fresh perspective on the significance of England's largest post-war migrant group for current debates on identity and difference in contemporary Britain. The first book to apply Popular Memory Theory to the Irish Diaspora, it opens new lines of critical enquiry within scholarship on the Irish in modern Britain. Combining innovative use of migrant life histories with cultural representations of the post-war Irish experience, it interrogates the interaction between lived experience, personal memory and cultural myth to further understanding of the work of memory in the production of migrant subjectivities. Based on richly contextualised case studies addressing experiences of emigration, urban life, work, religion, and the Troubles in England, chapters shed new light on the collective fantasies of post-war migrants and the circumstances that formed them.