[ISL] "How Irish-America sees Ireland"
Rosita Boland's interview with some New England Irish-Americans leaves me hoping that these people are not representative of the wider Irish-American community in their knowledge of what Ireland actually is right now.
We in Ireland might think we know who Irish-Americans are. They’re the visitors who arrive each year before the swallows, to travel the country on buses, to golf, to look for their roots. They search out traditional music, castles, scenic countryside, the Book of Kells and something far more abstract: an attempt to connect with their past.
But there are millions of Irish-Americans who never make it to Ireland, whose stories we do not know. Usually only the economically privileged can afford to travel to Ireland. And the sheer volume of people who identify as Irish-American might in any case make it hard for all of them to visit Ireland in their lifetimes.
The US Migration Policy Institute has recorded 39 million people as claiming Irish ancestry. The US Census Bureau data collected in 2011 recorded almost 33.1 million people, or just over 10 per cent of the population, in 2014. The disparity shows how hard it can be to define identity.
In September The Irish Times travelled to Boston, Massachusetts, where 21.5 per cent of the state’s population say that they are of Irish descent. I talked to eight people who claim Irish ancestry but who have never been to Ireland. I wanted to learn why their Irish heritage was so important to them and what their views were on a country they had never been to; how their lives had been shaped by a religion, culture and education that had been handed down.
In the course of these interviews I discovered that when Irish-Americans talk about identifying with the Irish they mean the Irish who came to settle in the United States and their descendants, not those of us living in Ireland. Ireland itself, the country, is the abstract, romanticised receptacle of dreams and green fields, and the place that will soothe a lifelong ache.
We in Ireland might think we know who Irish-Americans are. They’re the visitors who arrive each year before the swallows, to travel the country on buses, to golf, to look for their roots. They search out traditional music, castles, scenic countryside, the Book of Kells and something far more abstract: an attempt to connect with their past.
But there are millions of Irish-Americans who never make it to Ireland, whose stories we do not know. Usually only the economically privileged can afford to travel to Ireland. And the sheer volume of people who identify as Irish-American might in any case make it hard for all of them to visit Ireland in their lifetimes.
The US Migration Policy Institute has recorded 39 million people as claiming Irish ancestry. The US Census Bureau data collected in 2011 recorded almost 33.1 million people, or just over 10 per cent of the population, in 2014. The disparity shows how hard it can be to define identity.
In September The Irish Times travelled to Boston, Massachusetts, where 21.5 per cent of the state’s population say that they are of Irish descent. I talked to eight people who claim Irish ancestry but who have never been to Ireland. I wanted to learn why their Irish heritage was so important to them and what their views were on a country they had never been to; how their lives had been shaped by a religion, culture and education that had been handed down.
In the course of these interviews I discovered that when Irish-Americans talk about identifying with the Irish they mean the Irish who came to settle in the United States and their descendants, not those of us living in Ireland. Ireland itself, the country, is the abstract, romanticised receptacle of dreams and green fields, and the place that will soothe a lifelong ache.