Living the sequel Characterizing recent Irish history has come to involve a new temporal orthodoxy of pre- and post- 1990s Ireland. Like the testaments of the Bible, it is divided into old and new, and many may argue that the comparison does not end there (although the promised land has been relocated to part two). Bonanza development and globalization, the swift celebration of consumer society, and experiencing what Zygmunt Bauman caustically calls the 'two-sided coin of mobility' has generated a vocal and complex consideration of Irish identities. In countless ways, the daily experience of social life and interaction produces negotiations and versions of what it is to be oneself, presumably including disparate and overlapping understandings of Irishness. Yet in general public discourse, a fixation with received and assumed notions of culture and multiculturalism has privileged concepts that involve exclusion as a condition of their discourse. In common with many European countries, Irish conceptualizations and experiences of change have been accompanied by 'an anxiety about cultural change and cultural power', even if the issue of power is barely articulated. This article contends that rather than passively adopting the obscuring parameters of culture and multiculturalism and grappling with issues thus (de)formed, considering Ireland's changes and futures necessitates developing and calibrating concepts capable of articulating what is actually invested in these debates. As they are now commonly deployed, culture and multiculturalism configure change as an end state, and lack the fluidity to encompass adaptations, hybridities and multiple allegiances