King O'Riain, Rebecca (2019) How the Irish Became More Than White: Mixed-Race Irishness in Historical and Contemporary Contexts. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. ISSN 1369-183X

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Abstract

Mixed-race people can be caught in a web of stereotypes – being pathologised as tragically ‘mixed up’ or heralded as the precursors of a ‘rainbow nation’. Many of these stereotypes have come primarily from research and popular cultural images in the US and the UK. Recently, within Critical Mixed-Race Studies, there is a call to study mixed-race people outside of these stereotypes, particularly those living outside the US and UK. Ireland is a unique place to look at mixed-race experiences. As a post-colonial nation within Europe with a strongly racialised past (non-white to white) and a global history of emigration, Ireland is actively grappling with contemporary rapid migration and racial/ethnic change from the 2000s to today and is now possibly becoming less white. This paper examines the historical and contemporary contexts of being mixed-race in Ireland to analyse the potential political and social meanings of mixed-race Irishness today. It begins with a demographic snapshot of racial/ethnic changes in Ireland and examines the role of symbolic representations of mixed-race in Ireland. Through indicative qualitative interviews, it concludes with some tentative ideas about how understandings of mixed-race may be shifting within Ireland today.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	Cite as: To cite this article: Rebecca Chiyoko King-O’Riain (2019): How the Irish became more than white: mixed-race Irishness in historical and contemporary contexts, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, DOI: 10.1080/1369183X.2019.1654156
Keywords:	Mixed-race; Ireland; critical mixed-race studies; Irish;
Academic Unit:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Institutes > Maynooth University Social Sciences Institute, MUSSI Faculty of Social Sciences > Sociology
Item ID:	13523
Identification Number:	https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2019.1654156
Depositing User:	Dr Rebecca King O Riain
Date Deposited:	11 Nov 2020 16:50
Journal or Publication Title:	Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis (Routledge)
Refereed:	Yes
URI:	Publisher
Use Licence:	This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available here

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