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View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by WestminsterResearch WestminsterResearch http://www.westminster.ac.uk/research/westminsterresearch The migrant in contemporary Irish literature and film: representations and perspectives Aisling McKeown School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Languages This is an electronic version of a PhD thesis awarded by the University of Westminster. © The Author, 2013. This is an exact reproduction of the paper copy held by the University of Westminster library. The WestminsterResearch online digital archive at the University of Westminster aims to make the research output of the University available to a wider audience. Copyright and Moral Rights remain with the authors and/or copyright owners. Users are permitted to download and/or print one copy for non-commercial private study or research. Further distribution and any use of material from within this archive for profit-making enterprises or for commercial gain is strictly forbidden. Whilst further distribution of specific materials from within this archive is forbidden, you may freely distribute the URL of WestminsterResearch: (http://westminsterresearch.wmin.ac.uk/). In case of abuse or copyright appearing without permission e-mail [email protected] THE MIGRANT IN CONTEMPORARY IRISH LITERATURE AND FILM: REPRESENTATIONS AND PERSPECTIVES AISLING MCKEOWN A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the University of Westminster for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy March 2013 2 Abstract The transition from the twentieth to the twenty-first century saw Ireland transformed from a homogeneous emigrant nation into a multi-cultural society. A growing body of contemporary Irish literature and film is engaging with the reality of multi-cultural Ireland and representing the challenges of migrant life from a variety of perspectives. At the same time, these narratives reflect the contradictions, confusions and concerns that define Irish attitudes towards their new migrant communities. The central argument of this thesis is that this new cultural production, whilst interrogating paradigms of national identity, is also adding different perspectives to the Irish literary and cinematic canon. I have chosen to focus on the novel, short story and film genres for their accessibility and potentially wide reach, as well as their tangible and permanent forms. Within my chosen genres, I have selected texts and films by both Irish and migrant writers and filmmakers that represent as diverse a range of perspectives as possible. My close textual analysis of the novels, short stories and films draws on historic Irish literary tradition and in the case of migrant writers, those of their countries of origin, to examine key themes, narrative style and form. More broadly, the research is informed by postcolonial, globalisation and transnational theory, reflecting its anthropological and sociological dimensions. My thesis reveals the impact of migrants on new Irish writing as producers of and protagonists within texts. It outlines changes to the notion of Irish identity, culture and writing as a consequence of immigration. Finally, as a study of a range of narratives that represent the experience of first-generation migrants in twenty-first century Ireland, it constitutes an original contribution to knowledge and provides a benchmark for further research into migrant writing and film of the future. 3 Table of Contents Acknowledgements 5 Author’s declaration 6 Introduction: Contexts 7 Foreword 7 Liquid Modernity: Ireland in the Global Age 8 Genres and Themes 21 Historical Overview: Irish Nationalism, Emigration and Immigration 26 From Past to Present: Tracing the Migrant in Irish Literature and Film 41 Cityscapes and Landscapes: Spaces and Migration 51 Chapter Outline 57 Chapter One - ‘A distraction in other people’s worlds’:The Eastern European Migrant in Chris Binchy’s Open-handed (2008) and Hugo Hamilton’s Hand in the Fire (2010) 61 Open-handed 64 Hand in the Fire 88 Chapter Two - ‘Wandering around the fringes of society’: Irish and Nigerian Perspectives in Four Contemporary Short Stories 105 ‘As if There Were Trees’ 112 ‘The summer of birds’ 123 ‘Grafton Street of Dublin’ 131 ‘Shackles’ 148 4 Chapter Three - ‘Forever, happily ever after, once upon a time’: Migrant Belonging in David Gleeson’s The Front Line (2006), Neil Jordan’s Ondine (2009) and Urszula Antoniak’s Nothing Personal (2009) 159 The Front Line 167 Ondine 179 Nothing Personal 190 Conclusion 210 Appendices: 218 Appendix I: Interview with Chris Binchy 219 Appendix II: Film Images 229 Appendix III: Interview with The Gombeens 230 Bibliography 236 Primary Sources 236 Secondary Sources 239 5 Acknowledgements I wish to thank my supervisor Dr. Monica Germana who advised and supported me consistently throughout the writing process, and who encouraged me to explore interesting and ultimately fruitful lines of thought. Thanks also to my second supervisor Dr Anne Witchard for her enthusiasm, and for encouraging me to let my own voice come through in the writing. The wider staff of the English Department at the University of Westminster have encouraged my research in many ways, not least of which has been facilitating my attendance at a number of conferences that provided inspiration for my work. I would also like to thank the writers and performers in Dublin and Galway who were so generous with their time and ideas when I interviewed them during the research process. Their interest in my subject matter gave me the confidence to pursue it and their knowledge of the Irish arts scene enriched my interpretations of my texts. Not all of the interviews made it into the final thesis, but they include valuable material for future research. I would like to thank in particular Chris Binchy, Jonathan Gunning and Miquel Barcelό (The Gombeens) for their kind permission to include their interviews in this thesis, and Hugo Hamilton for allowing me to submit his for publication in the Irish Studies Review. On a personal level, I want to thank my husband Anthony and children Rosie, Ciaran and Thomas. This thesis is testimony to their endless patience, support and understanding over the past few years. I would also like to thank Marge and Andy for their ongoing encouragement, and my parents, John and Yvonne Shanagher, who welcomed me back ‘home’ on those occasions where I needed the time and space to focus and write. 6 Author’s Declaration I declare that all the material contained in this thesis is my own work. Aisling McKeown 28 March 2013 7 Introduction The historical and cultural experience of the western metropolis cannot now be fictionalized without the marginal, oblique gaze of its postcolonial migrant populations cutting across the imaginative metropolitan geography of territory and community, tradition and culture.1 Foreword As a nation historically defined by emigration, Ireland’s transformation during the 1990s into a multicultural society as a result of inward migration was unprecedented in its history. For the first time, immigration overtook emigration. 2 Past phases of immigration had been on a significantly smaller scale and taken place more gradually.3 This change in the flow of contemporary migration was largely as a result of the demand for labour arising from Ireland’s so-called ‘Celtic Tiger’ economic boom, that lasted from approximately 1995 to 2007.4 It was further fuelled by the accession of ten new member states to the European Union in 2004, the largest of which was Poland, with Poles now accounting for the largest non-national community in Ireland.5 Census results indicate a rise of 143 per cent in the number of non-Irish born people living in the country between 2002 and 2011, accounting for 12 per cent of the overall population and comprising 199 different nationalities.6 The speed with which this transformation took place can be gauged by comparing the fact that the percentage of the population in Ireland giving their ethnic 1 Homi Bhabha, ‘Novel Metropolis’, New Statesman and Society, 16 February 1990, p. 16. 2 Shane Hegarty, The Irish (and Other Foreigners): From the first people to the Poles (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 2009), p. 190. Hegarty states that ‘1996 was the year in which Ireland finally stopped being a country from which people left and instead became one of net immigration. It was the last EU country of the fifteen at the time to reach that milestone.’ 3 Irish history is peppered with the arrival of various ‘others’, from the early Viking and Norman invasions of the eighth and twelve centuries respectively and the English invasions of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The twentieth century saw the arrival of Jewish refugees during its first decade, Hungarians in 1956, Chileans in 1973 and Vietnamese refugees in 1979. Chinese immigration to Northern Ireland has been taking place since the 1950s and 1960s as Chinese migrants from the New Territories and Hong Kong had free access into Great Britain as Commonwealth citizens. 4 Philip Watson, ‘Ireland at the end of the road’, Daily Telegraph, 14 January 2012 <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/8973421/Ireland-at-the-end-of-the- road.html> [accessed 30 January 2013] (paragraph 4). 5 John Drennan, ‘One in four Polish workers in country claiming dole’, Irish Independent, 5 August 2012 <http://www.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/john-drennan/one-in-four-polish- workers-in-country-claiming-dole-3190040.html> paragraph 5 of 14 [accessed 30 January 2013] 6 Ruadhán Mac Cormaic, ‘Ten Icons of Contemporary Ireland: Certificate of Naturalisation’, Irish Times, 20 October 2012, Weekend Review, p. 1. 8 background as ‘something other than “White Irish”’ in the 2006 census of Ireland was similar to the percentage of people identifying as other than White British in the 2001 Census in the United Kingdom. What had taken sixty years to occur in Britain (with the majority of the ethnic minorities made up of the ‘British-born descendents of earlier arrivals’), had taken place in Ireland in ten, where the ethnic minorities were ‘overwhelmingly [first generation] immigrants’.