New Connections, Old Exclusions: Ethnic Minorities in Ireland’s Information Society (Media Monitor)

New Connections, Old Exclusions: Ethnic Minorities in Ireland’s Information Society

Ireland: From a country of emigrants to one of immigrantsIreland

until the very recent past, was a country of re-occurring and sometimes massive emigration. This, however, does not mean that there were no immigrants and minority ethnic groups (for example, Jews, Travellers, Chinese) in the country before the pronounced presence of the visible ‘other’ from the 1990s. In-migration and minority ethnic groups “have been a reality in Ireland long before the moral panics created by the arrival of a relatively small number of asylum seekers in the 1990s (Lentin, 2001).” Dr Ronit Lentin’s perception is shared by Fintan O’Toole (2000), Piarais MacEinri (2000), and Robbie McVeigh (2002). Prior to the mid-1990s when in-migration surpassed out-migration for the first time, immigration to Ireland was low, intermittent and mainly from the United Kingdom, the United States of America and continental Europe. The immigrant groups consisted mainly of retirees and high-skills immigration (mostly non-permanent) within the multinational sector (MacEinri, 2001).

To Read the Full Report