Corcoran, Mary (2003) Global cosmopolites: issues of self-identity and collective identity among the transnational Irish elite. Etudes Irlandaises, 28 (2). pp. 135-150.

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Abstract

In this paper I examine the migratory experiences of a sub-group of Irish emigrants, namely, the transnational professional elite. The paper explores a number of themes that emerged from interviews with a sample of returners, who travelled to live and work in Britain and North America in the 1980s and returned to Ireland in the 1990s. I will argue that the migratory process as experienced by these returners is framed within a discourse of modernity that is both contradictory and ambivalent. Those contradictions and ambivalences will be explored though an analysis of the returners self-identity as it is expressed in relation to work, ethnicity and homecoming. I conclude that their insider/outsider status in both the host society and the society of origin, traps them in a liminal space wherein they must confront the contradictions and ambivalences that lie at the heart of late modernity.

Item Type:	Article
Keywords:	Irish returners; Irishness; self-identity; homecoming; modernity; disenchantment;
Academic Unit:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Sociology
Item ID:	1218
Depositing User:	Prof. Mary Corcoran
Date Deposited:	26 Jan 2009 12:01
Journal or Publication Title:	Etudes Irlandaises
Publisher:	Universitaires du Septentrion
Refereed:	Yes
URI:
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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