Demography, State and Society: Irish Migration to Britain, 1921-1971

The process of migration is associated with feelings of longing, homesickness, the shock of exposure to a new culture and, in other instances, with escape and freedom. Between the foundation of the new Irish state in 1921-22 and the early 1970s, approximately one and a half million people left independent Ireland, the vast majority travelling to Britain. Demography, State and Society is the first comprehensive analysis of the twentieth-century Irish exodus to Britain. Using a range of previously unused source materials, this book provides a detailed examination of the many ways in which migration shaped twentieth-century Irish society.
Enda Delaney argues that migration to Britain was qualitatively different from the transatlantic journey to the United States; indeed, it is argued that, if anything, transience was the leitmotiv of the Irish migrant experience. This book examines in detail the patterns of Irish migration to Britain; it also offers an analysis of the reasons for large-scale migration. In the process, an important question is answered: why did so many people leave?
Demography, State and Society focuses on a number of vital themes, many of them rarely mentioned by previous studies: state policy in Ireland; official responses in Britain; gender dimensions; individual migrant experience; patterns of settlement in Britain; and the crucial phenomenon of return migration. A major study of Irish migration, this book also offers much that will be of interest to scholars, students and general readers in the wider fields of modern British and Irish history and migration studies more broadly.